Infinitival relative clauses and italian clefts

• Main Author: Petra Sleeman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti 2010-01-01
• Series: Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics
• Subjects: left; infinitival relative clause; contrastive focus; Italian
• Online Access: http://bwpl.unibuc.ro/index.pl/infinitival_relative_clauses_and_italian_clefts

This paper addresses the issue of the licensing of infinitival subject relative clauses by clefts. I claim that infinitival subject relatives are licensed by a contrastive focus. I assume that in Italian clefts always express a contrastive focus, which makes them licensors of infinitival subject relative clauses as opposed to English and French in which a cleft does not necessarily have to be contrastive. I furthermore claim that the infinitival relative clause is a complement, which would account for the fact that it allows extraction.