Focus on Clefts: A Perspective from Cypriot Greek

Abstract

Cypriot Greek (CG) differs from Standard Modern Greek (SMG) in many interesting ways, even in the realm of grammar (morphosyntax). This paper investigates one such difference, namely the syntax of focus. It is argued that CG focus constructions exhibit an underlying clefting structure. This is put into perspective with both SMG (which lacks clefts altogether) and English (in particular, it-clefts). A novel analysis is proposed for the derivation of clefting structures — at least for English-like it-clefts and CG focus clefts: CG focused expressions are sideward moved into an underlying predicational cleft structure, analogously to English it-clefts as argued