All-cleft constructions in the London–Lund Corpora of spoken English: Empirical and methodological perspectives

Abstract

This study investigates all-cleft constructions in the London–Lund Corpora of spoken British English. It has two aims: an empirical and a methodological one. The empirical aim is to contribute to research on spoken discourse by analysing the form–meaning properties of all-clefts along with their pragmatic functions and their development since the 1950s drawing on insights from Cognitive Linguistics with special focus on Diachronic Construction Grammar. We show that all-clefts are used both as assertions and directives. They focalise an element that speakers find particularly relevant at the same time as they have the effect of blocking alternative perspectives and thereby contracting the discursive space for addressees. The methodological aim is to critically assess the comparability level of the diachronic corpora based on a detailed investigation of the distribution of all-clefts in the data. We show that there is a high degree of similarity between the designs of the corpora, which makes them suitable for diachronic investigations of recent change.