The syntax of pseudoclefts (kto X, tak eto Y) in Russian

Elina Ozhogova
Lomonosov Moscow State University

Abstract: The article describes the syntax of pseudoclefts — sentences of the form “kto X, tak eto Y” — in Russian. To study the properties of the structure, a corpus study was conducted, building on the results of which, I offer an analysis explaining connectivity effects exhibited by most pseudoclefts — the phenomenon whereby “an element is present or interpreted in a way that is normally associated with a certain syntactic configuration seemingly without that configuration obtaining” [Mikkelsen 2011]. I show that different analyses are required for specificational and predicational pseudoclefts: the deletion analysis and the analysis relying on the basic generation of the focal component respectively. The second analysis will also derive pseudoclefts that do not exhibit connectivity effects. At the end of the paper, problematic cases for the deletion analysis are discussed and solutions to them are proposed.

Keywords: pseudo-cleft, specificational reading, predicational reading, connectivity, PF-deletion

For citation: Ozhogova E. The syntax of pseudoclefts (kto X, tak eto Y) in Russian. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2023. Vol. 6, iss. 1. Pp. 70–89. (In Rus.) doi:10.37632/PI.2023.74.73.003