Workshop description
Most analyses of cleft sentences focus on the English it-cleft (1a) and pseudo-cleft (1b) and their equivalents across languages, and more specifically on it-clefts with a focus-background articulation and specificational semantics (De Cesare and Garassino 2015; Declerck 1983; 1988; Destruel 2012; Destruel & Velleman 2014; Cruschina 2012; Den Dikken 2013; Dufter 2009a; 2009b; Lahousse and Borremans 2014; Lambrecht 2001).

(1) – Who gave you the book?
a. – It’s John who gave me the book.
b. – The one who gave me the book is John.

However, there is an increasing interest in non-prototypical clefts, i.e. it-clefts that do not have a focus-background articulation (see example 2) and/or clefts that are introduced by an element other than it (see examples in 3), such as French il y a ‘there is’, Italian c’è ‘there is’, English there is, possessive clefts (I have my X who / J’ai ma X qui / ho mia madre che and perception clefts (voici / voilà / ecco) (on il y a clefts: Ashby 1995; 1999; Giry-Schneider 1988; Jullien 2014; Karssenberg in press; Lambrecht 1988a; 1994; 2000b; Léard 1992; Secova 2010; Verwimp & Lahousse 2016; on c’è clefts: De Cesare 2007; La Fauci et al. 2010; Marzo and Crocco 2015; on there clefts: Collins 1991; 1992; Davidse 1999; 2000; 2014; Lambrecht 1988b; Piotrowski 2009; on French possessive clefts: Conti 2010; Furukawa 1996; Rothenberg 1979, see also Lahousse & Lamiroy 2015)

(2) [Beginning of a speech] It was about 50 years ago that Ford gave us the weekend. (Prince 1978)

(3) a. Il y a le téléphone qui sonne
there has the phone that is.ringing
‘The phone is ringing.’ (Lambrecht 2000a: 653)
b. C’è un signore che vuole parlare con te.
‘There’s a man who wants to talk to you.’ (Marzo and Crocco 2015)
c. You are quite right David, it was engineered, seems there’s only me and you who can see this. (Davidse and Kimps to appear)
d. I have a friend of mine in the history department teaches two courses per semester. (Lambrecht 2001: 509)
e. Voilà le facteur qui arrive.
‘There’s the mailman coming. / Here comes the mailman.’ (Lambrecht 2002)

Although these types of clefts are argued to be frequent in spoken language (e.g. Lambrecht 1988a), a lot of questions regarding the functions and formal properties of these clefts remain unanswered. The aim of this workshop is to bring together both descriptive and theoretical analyses on underresearched types of clefts in order to arrive at a better understanding of those clefts and of clefts in general.

In particular, the workshop aims to address the following questions:

• What are the similarities and differences between clefts introduced by different elements (it, there, I’ve got and their equivalents in other languages)
• How do non-prototypical clefts relate to one another cross-linguistically?
• What are the repercussions of the existence of non-prototypical clefts for the definition of clefts in general?
• What is the link between the various introductory expressions (e.g. there, c’è…) on the one hand, and sentences that are introduced by the same elements without being clefts on the other (e.g. the link between there clefts and there existential sentences, I’ve got clefts and possessive sentences)
• Which (formal, semantic, discourse-functional) properties do all clefts have in common?
• Is there a single type of relative clause that all clefts have in common or do the forms and functions of cleft relative clauses vary?
• Should non-prototypical clefts be seen as constructions or should they receive a compositional analysis?
• How do the different cleft types relate to online language processing?
• …

We welcome contributions from all kinds of theoretical frameworks and we are particularly interested in analyses that are based on empirical work (corpus research, psycholinguistic and experimental studies).

Abstract submission
Abstracts should be no more than 500 words (excluding references and examples), anonymous, written in English and in .docx or .odf format (Times New Roman 12, line spacing 1.5). The abstracts should clearly state the research questions/hypotheses, methodology and results of the study.

Please include author and affiliation information as well as 3-5 keywords in the email and send your anonymous abstract to Lena.Karssenberg[at]kuleuven.be before September 3rd 2016.
Notification of acceptance: September 15th 2016

Invited speakers:
Anna-Maria De Cesare (Universität Basel)
Kristin Davidse (KU Leuven)
Emilie Destruel-Johnson (University of Iowa)
Silvio Cruschina (Universität Wien)

References
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Ashby, William J. (1999). Au sujet de quoi? La fonction du sujet grammatical, du complément d’objet direct, et de la construction présentative en français parlé. The French Review, 72(3), 481-492.
Collins, Peter C. (1991). Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in English. London: Routledge.
Collins, Peter C. (1992). Cleft existentials in English. Language Sciences, 14(4), 419-433.
Conti, Virginie. (2010). La construction en avoir SN qui SV (« j’ai ma copine qui habite à Paris ») : une forme de dispositif clivé ? Linx, 62-63, 63-87.
Cruschina, Silvio. 2014. Some notes on clefting and fronting. In Elisa Di Domenico, Cornelia Hamann & Simona Matteini (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Davidse, Kristin. (1999). The semantics of cardinal versus enumerative existential constructions. Cognitive Linguistics, 10(3), 203-250.
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Davidse, Kristin. (2014). On specificational there-clefts. Leuven working papers in Linguistics, 1-34.
Davidse, Kristin and Ditte Kimps. (to appear). Specificational there-clefts: functional structure and information structure. English Text Construction, 9(1).
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