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Properties of It-Cleft Presupposition
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
It is generally accepted that it-clefts convey logical presuppositions. In this paper, I examine the properties of those presuppositions with a view to shedding some light on what function they serve in discourse. First of all, an examination of naturally occurring data shows that presuppositions of it-clefts are not normally composed of information that is already entailed by the context: they are frequently used to communicate wholly or partly new information. In the main part of the paper, I present an explanation of the function of It-cleft presupposition that is applicable to all clefts regardless of their information structure. The account appeals to the current notion of presuppositions as anaphoric environments, motivating this view further with empirical evidence for anaphoricity. I turn first of all the Prince's (1978) observation that it -cleft presuppositions mark information as KNOWN FACT in the discourse. This observation, while useful, is not itself an explanation, since further factors can be shown to underlie the effect. First, I demonstrate that it-cleft presuppositions mark information as ANAPHORIC. Such marking is independent of information structure, and has observable linguistic effects. The empirical evidence for the anaphoricity of cleft presupposition is of three types:
1. Elements that are ambiguous between an anaphoric and an emphatic use take on their anaphoric reading when placed within an it-cleft presupposition;
2. It-cleft presuppositions enable the anaphoric relation upon which contrast depends to be established, in contexts where information that is simply given does not have the same effect; and
3. Information placed within an it-cleft presupposition appears to remind rather than inform, regardless of its objective status in the discourse.
Arising out of this anaphoricity is a second factor: presupposed information is in general NON-NEGOTIABLE. I suggest that non-negotiability arises from anaphoriciry because anaphora implies the existence of prior reference to the same information. Participants in a discourse are, with each utterance, placing propositions ‘on the table’ for acceptance or rejection by interlocutors. If a proposition is placed on the table along with a marking to say that this is not the proposition's original appearance the speaker is indicating that the time for any negotiation—or, more specifically, any rejection—is past. This gives rise to the ‘known fact’ effect observed by Prince.
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