Frequency, forms and functions of cleft constructions in Romance and Germanic : contrastive, corpus-based studies

The volume addresses descriptive, theoretical and practical issues relatedto the use of Cleft constructions in contemporary varieties of Romance and Germaniclanguages. By presenting, in a single book, data from both the Romanceand the Germanic languages, one of the main objectives of the volume is toincrease the discussion and knowledge transfer between scholars of close, butinstitutionally distinct disciplines. As some of the papers included in this volumeshow, a detailed account of lesser-known Cleft constructions in the Romance andthe Germanic languages as well as of Cleft constructions belonging to languageswhich have a somewhat peripheral status in the current, international linguisticdebate is essential for fine-tuning our understanding of the raison d’être of thecleaving mechanism and, more generally, of the macro-communicative strategyof information highlighting.