Relatives and Pronouns in the English Cleft Construction

In this paper I propose a new analysis of the English cleft in which the cleft clause is a restrictive relative clause adjoined to the clefted XP. I provide evidence showing that both ‘matching’ and ‘raising’ derivations are possible, that the initial it of clefts is not an expletive, and that the cleft clause undergoes obligatory extraposition to VP. Taken together, this evidence favours the present analysis over (a) analyses in which the cleft clause is extraposed from subject position, and (b) analyses in which the cleft clause is a complement of the copula or a focus head.