Abstract: As frequently used emphatic sentences, the cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences, are of great importance in English grammar. And the special syntactic structure of the cleft sentences and pseudo-cleft sentences has gained more and more attention among linguists in recent decades. This paper focuses on the comparative study of cleft sentences and pseudo-cleft sentences in terms of form, meaning and use with linguistic data from the British National Corpus (BNC). Firstly, it introduces the background information of the cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences and the significance of the study. Secondly, the syntactic structure and meaning of the cleft sentence and the pseudo-cleft sentence are given. Lastly, this paper compares the differences between the cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences in form, meaning and use. This study is a continuation and development of the previous researches. And the result of the study may have reference value for students, teachers and language users in learning, teaching and using the cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences in English.

Key words: cleft; pseudo-cleft; syntactic structure; meaning

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Significance of the Study-2

2. The Syntactic Structure and Meaning of the Two Constructions-3

2.1 The Syntactic Structure of Cleft Sentences-3

2.2 The Meaning of the Cleft Sentences-4

2.3-The Syntactic Structure of the Pseudo-Cleft Sentences-6

2.4-The Meaning of the Pseudo-Cleft Sentences-6

3. Differences between the Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Sentences-8

3.1 Difference in Form-8

3.2-Difference in Meaning-9

3.3-Difference in Use-10

3.4-Summary-16

4-Conclusion-17

References-19