Output details
29 - English Language and Literature
University of Northumbria at Newcastle
The English it-cleft: a constructional account and a diachronic investigation
This book includes a diachronic investigation of the English it-cleft construction, spanning from Old English to Modern English. This involves the analysis of a considerable body of data extracted from four historical corpora: the YCOE, the PPCME2, the PPCEME and the PPCMBE. It also examines the it-cleft from a synchronic perspective, using frequency information gathered from a large contemporary corpus: the ICE-GB. This amounted to a lengthy period of data collection, coding and analysis: the selection and sorting of it-cleft data was complex and time-consuming; it-clefts are notoriously difficult to identify and separate from superficially similar but structurally distinct sentence-types.