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Cleft Sentences in Spoken Arabic of Iraq

Received: 22 January 2016     Accepted: 1 February 2016     Published: 23 February 2016
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Abstract

This study is mainly concerned with cleft constructions as one of the grammatical devices used to highlight certain elements of the sentence or to emphasize a particular idea. The language user should be aware of the elements that can be highlighted and how he can highlight the proper element that serves to give the new information or the particular idea. It-cleft construction has been studied both as a focusing device and thematizing device. The construction is of interest in studies of information structure because it allows a speaker / writer to spread the information of a single proposition over two clauses and, consequently, two information units. It is normally assumed that the cleft construction is a means of steering the focus towards the clefted constituents. The it-cleft can have various types of phrases and clauses as its focus. This study adopts two models of analysis given by Halliday (1994) and Prince (1978) to explore the intricacies of spoken Arabic of Iraq. To the best of my knowledge this study has not been tackled yet; therefore; the present study is an attempt to fill such a gap.

Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 4, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijll.20160401.14
Page(s) 25-29
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2016. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Cleft Construction, Types of Clefts, the Structure of It Cleft, the Information Structure of It Cleft, Discontinuous Cleft, Marked and Unmarked Theme

References
[1] Biber, D., S. Johanson, G. Leech, S. Conrad and E. Finegan (1999), Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.
[2] Chalker, Sylvia, 1984. Current English Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
[3] Chomsky, Noam.1970. Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpretation. New York: Harcourt Brace & World.
[4] Close, R. A. 1975 A Refrence Grammar for Students of English. London: Longman.
[5] Collins, P. C 1991, Cleft and Pseudo cleft Constructions in English. London and New York: Routledge.
[6] Crystal, David. 1990. Rediscover Grammar, Essex: Longman Group Ltd.
[7] Declerk, R. 1984a “the pragmatics of it clefts and wh-clefts” Lingua 64: 251-289.
[8] Delin, J. and J. Oberlander, 1995, “Syntactic constrains on discourse structure: The case of it-cleft”. Linguistics, 33: 465-500.
[9] Eastwood, J. and Mackin, R. 1989. Basic English Grammar. Oxford: oxford university press.
[10] Gundel, J. K. 2002, “Information structure and the use of cleft sentences in English and Norwegian”, in: H. Hasselgard et al. (eds). Information structure in a cross- linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: Rodopi; 113-128.
[11] Halliday, M. A. K. 1994. An introduction to functional grammar. 2nd ed. London: Arnold.
[12] Jesperson, O. 1969. Analytic Sentence. London: Hold, R. and Wiston, Inc.
[13] Johansson, M. (2002), Cleft in English and Swedish: A contrastive study of It-clefts and wh-clefts in orginal texts and translation. PhD thesis, Lund University.
[14] Kaltenbock, Gunther. 1993. “A brief discussion of it- clefts in spoken texts” Internet: fb10. uni-brenen-delang listik / lang pro/ project Lgeml- lexpaper.
[15] Kennan, Edward. 1977. Two kinds of presupposition in Natural language. New York: Holt.
[16] Lambrecht, K. 2002. Varieties of Cleft Constructions and Why They Exist, Internet: http://www.psych. Wis. Edu / lang/ Abstract/ Stjohn.
[17] Leech, Geoffry & Svartvik Jan. 1975. A Communicative Grammar of English. London: Longman.
[18] Murcia, Marianne Celce. 2004. Approaches To Teaching English Grammar with Reference to Written Discourse. Internet: http://www.exchange. State.Gov/ education long teaching/ functional Section 5# 5.
[19] Prince, Ellen F. 1978. “ A comparison of wh- clefts and it- clefts in Discourse” Language 54: 883- 906.
[20] Quirk, R. S. Greenbaum, S. 1973. A Universal Grammar of English. London. Longman.
[21] Quirk, R. S. Greenbaum. G. Leech, and J. Svartvik 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
[22] Swan, M. 1996. Practical English Usage. Oxford: oxford University press.
[23] Winograd, Jerry. 1983. Language as a Cognative process. New York: Addison- Wesley Publishing Company. Inc.
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  • APA Style

    Tawfeeq Abdulameer Hashim AL-Ghazali. (2016). Cleft Sentences in Spoken Arabic of Iraq. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 4(1), 25-29. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20160401.14

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    ACS Style

    Tawfeeq Abdulameer Hashim AL-Ghazali. Cleft Sentences in Spoken Arabic of Iraq. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2016, 4(1), 25-29. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20160401.14

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    AMA Style

    Tawfeeq Abdulameer Hashim AL-Ghazali. Cleft Sentences in Spoken Arabic of Iraq. Int J Lang Linguist. 2016;4(1):25-29. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20160401.14

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijll.20160401.14,
      author = {Tawfeeq Abdulameer Hashim AL-Ghazali},
      title = {Cleft Sentences in Spoken Arabic of Iraq},
      journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
      volume = {4},
      number = {1},
      pages = {25-29},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20160401.14},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20160401.14},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20160401.14},
      abstract = {This study is mainly concerned with cleft constructions as one of the grammatical devices used to highlight certain elements of the sentence or to emphasize a particular idea. The language user should be aware of the elements that can be highlighted and how he can highlight the proper element that serves to give the new information or the particular idea. It-cleft construction has been studied both as a focusing device and thematizing device. The construction is of interest in studies of information structure because it allows a speaker / writer to spread the information of a single proposition over two clauses and, consequently, two information units. It is normally assumed that the cleft construction is a means of steering the focus towards the clefted constituents. The it-cleft can have various types of phrases and clauses as its focus. This study adopts two models of analysis given by Halliday (1994) and Prince (1978) to explore the intricacies of spoken Arabic of Iraq. To the best of my knowledge this study has not been tackled yet; therefore; the present study is an attempt to fill such a gap.},
     year = {2016}
    }
    

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    AB  - This study is mainly concerned with cleft constructions as one of the grammatical devices used to highlight certain elements of the sentence or to emphasize a particular idea. The language user should be aware of the elements that can be highlighted and how he can highlight the proper element that serves to give the new information or the particular idea. It-cleft construction has been studied both as a focusing device and thematizing device. The construction is of interest in studies of information structure because it allows a speaker / writer to spread the information of a single proposition over two clauses and, consequently, two information units. It is normally assumed that the cleft construction is a means of steering the focus towards the clefted constituents. The it-cleft can have various types of phrases and clauses as its focus. This study adopts two models of analysis given by Halliday (1994) and Prince (1978) to explore the intricacies of spoken Arabic of Iraq. To the best of my knowledge this study has not been tackled yet; therefore; the present study is an attempt to fill such a gap.
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Author Information
  • Department of English language, Islamic University College, Najaf, Iraq

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