UCLA

This work seeks to add further depth to our knowledge of cleft constructions by examining the tense of the matrix copula. There are numerous accounts describing the semantics of clefts, but none of these have integrated the matrix tense, meaning that any current theory of cleft constructions would claim that ‘It was John that died.’ and ‘It is John that died.’ have the same formal meaning, despite the fact that there are situations in which one can be uttered but the other cannot.

This work proposes that the matrix tense overtly marks the topic time of the utterance (see Klein 1994), and that the cleft clause (e.g. ‘that died.’) is interpreted relative to that time. For instance, a past matrix tense communicates that the topic time precedes the utterance time. The property specified in the cleft clause ‘that died’ is therefore true for all individuals who died at some t prior to the topic time, rather than prior to the utterance time. These truth conditions are added to the cleft operator proposed by B�ring & Križ (2013).