Pseudo ) cleft constructions in old Romanian

The article examines the syntactic and semantic features of cleft sentences in Old Romanian (OR) as compared to Modern Romanian (MR). The clefting strategy in MR can only produce pseudo-cleft constructions (identifying structures with free relative clauses headed by ce, or relative clauses with an antecedent; the focalized constituent follows the relative clause and the copula; the reversed pattern is also possible: the focalized constituent is placed before the copula and the relative clause). The analysis of an OR corpus showed that cleft constructions were quite frequent, but the patterns were more diverse than in MR: besides cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions, OR also employed hybrid constructions, that amalgamate the features of the prototypical clefts.

This paper focuses on the distinction in the current syntactic theory between clefts and pseudo-clefts.
(1) a.It was John who left.
b.It was a red bag that I bought.
The general schema of a pseudo-cleft ( 2) is [relative clause + copula + focalized XP], and it can be organized as in (2a), or in the reversed pattern (2b): [focalized XP + copula + relative clause] (see Huddlestone et al., 2002Huddlestone et al., , p. 1414)).In a narrow perspective, pseudo-clefts are considered to be free relative clauses that belong to identification patterns in which they occupy a thematic position, as in (2a,b) (see Prince, 1978, p. 883); in a wider view, the class of pseudo-clefts may include relative clauses with a neutral antecedent as (fact/manner/place/reason, etc.) (2c), or relative clauses with a universal quantifier antecedent (2d) (Collins, 1991, p. 27), with the following general organization: [focalized XP + copula + antecedent + relative clause].
(2) a.What I bought was a red bag.b.A red bag was what I bought.c.The place where John saw Mary was in front of the bank.d.All he wanted was a hamburger.
The paper aims to present an inventory of cleft sentences patterns in Old Romanian (OR), and to confront it with the cleft patterns that are employed in Modern Romanian (MR).Most descriptions of Romanian clefts (Șerbănescu, 1996;Pană Dindelegan, 2013, p. 488) show that the clefting strategy in MR can only produce pseudo-clefts; they are either identification structures ([relative clause + copula + focalized XP]) with free relative clauses headed by ce (3a), or relative structures with an antecedent that has the properties mentioned by Collins (1991; see supra): a noun with generalizing value (3b,c) or the universal quantifier tot (3d); this structure matches the pattern: [antecedent + relative clause + copula + focalized XP].
Reversed pseudo-clefts are also possible in Romanian.The focalized constituent is extracted from subject position (4a) or direct object / prepositional object / adjunct position (4b); the pattern of such constructions is: [focalized XP + copula + antecedent + relative clause] 1 .
(3) a.Though not yet supported by quantitative analysis, an observation should be made: the pattern [focalized XP + copula + relative clause] is almost absent in MR (or, more precisely, it is limited to the situations in which the focalized constituent is an object, and the relative clause is headed by ce, with a marked preference for the antecedent construction [focalized XP + copula + antecedent + relative clause].Compared to the patterns under (3b-d), the pattern [relative clause + copula + focalized XP], in which the relative clause has a general nominal antecedent, also seems to have a limited distribution.The pattern favours ce as the head of the relative clause, and the focalized constituent is usually an object.Both cleft constructions are in free variation with the variant in which the relative clause has the pronominal antecedent ceea.This remark may lead to the conclusion that, in fact, the headless relative clause is a variant of the construction with ceea.For further detail regarding the distribution of (ceea) ce in MR relative clauses, see Gheorghe (2004, p. 140-148).

Cleft patterns in Old Romanian
The investigation of a corpus of Romanian 16 th -18 th century texts revealed the existence of many structures in which the focalization of a constituent is the result of a clefting mechanism.The cleft constructions identified in these texts are different from the clefts in MR, in terms of their general organization and in terms of morpho-syntactic features (that will be discussed below); the analysis of the corpus also showed that the pseudo-cleft pattern illustrated in (3a-d), and the reversed pattern in (4a) are both absent in OR.

Cleft sentences
The corpus revealed the existence of cleft patterns that are similar to the prototypical ones (which are known to be impossible in MR), and they are organized under the pattern [copula + focalized XP + relative clause].The structures in ( 5) are similar to the ones in (1), with the only difference that they lack the expletive pronoun.The corpus displays a great variety of constructions, both in terms of the syntactic position of the focalized constituent [subject in (5a,d,e), adjunct in (5b 1 ) and prepositional object in (5b 2 ,c)], and in terms of the choice of the relative connector.Moreover, the focalized XP may have a simple structure [proper name or demonstrative (5a,b)], or a complex structure (5c,d,e).The complex focalized constituent has a pronominal antecedent and a restrictive relative clause (bearing the focal information).The relative clause may also have a pronominal antecedent (5f ).

Reversed pseudo-clefts
In the OR corpus, the most frequent are the examples in which the focalization of a constituent employs the reversed clefting strategy, as in (4b): [focalized XP + copula + antecedent + relative clause]).As far as the XP under focus is concerned, the corpus analysis revealed the frequency of personal pronouns (9a-c), demonstratives (9d-f ) and pro-phrase demonstratives (9g), indefinites (9h), and proper nouns (10), all of them well represented in all stages of the OR. ( 9

Hybrid pseudo-clefts
A hybrid variant of cleft construction can be found in the examples under (11).The pattern amalgamates two structures: the prototypical cleft (with overt subject instead of an expletive) and the reversed pseudocleft.The focalized constituent is included in a predication of identification, which makes difficult the reconstruction of its relationship to the extraction position.As an argument for the amalgamated structure, see the hesitation regarding the person agreement in (11a) vs. (11b).The schema proposed for these constructions is [overt subject + copula + focalized XP + antecedent + relative clause]).Though the prototypical patterns are altered, these examples should also be considered clefts, due to the emphatic value of the construction.( 11 12) is interesting due to the different organization of the constituents in the structure (the copula is in front of the focalized XP), due to the negation and to the semantic nature of the focalized XP (it is an indefinite quantifier embedded in a phrase with empty head).In the same time, the example is peculiar because the empty head of the DP makes it difficult to be framed either into the prototypical pseudo-cleft pattern (12a) or into the reversed pseudo-cleft pattern (with an antecedent relative clause) (12a'): (12) a.Other constructions may be also included into the category of hybrid clefts: interrogative clauses as in example (13), negative constructions like (14a,b), where the focalized element is a covert negative quantifier, or reduced relative clauses like (15a) and elliptical constructions as in (15b); they all share the emphasis, the focalization of a constituent and its placement into a structure that 'breaks' the canonical organization of the sentence.( 13

Conclusions
The analysis of the corpus showed that, unlike MR, the cleft sentences patterns are more diverse in OR, both in terms of the structure organization and in terms of the focalizing procedures.The absence in the OR corpus of basic pseudo-clefts (much frequent in MR as compared to the reversed ones) seems to confirm the intuition that the pseudo-cleft pattern in MR is based on a French or Italian model and that it is relatively recent.On the other hand, the variety of these constructions (including the hybrid clefts, which may be influenced by some foreign models) show that the cleft constructions are not accidental in OR, and that they were a viable strategy for the focalization of a constituent.
The prototypical pseudo-cleft pattern [focalized XP + copula + relative clause], with the relative pronoun ce and with a focalized constituent in object position (see discussion in footnote 1), which is almost absent in MR, or at least reduced to a single pattern, is very well represented in the OR corpus.The examples under (6) show that in OR the patterns are more diversified than in MR.On the one hand, the focalized XP may occur in subject position, on the other hand, the relative clause may have other connectors besides ce [see (6a,c,d)]:The examples under (7a,b) have focalized proper names, numerals (7c), and complex DP (7d) extracted from subject position.Such constructions can be found in MR only with an antecedent relative clause.It is only justice that makes them praised by the people'The corpus also revealed examples in which the focalized constituent is extracted from direct object (8a,b) or prepositional object (8c,d) positions; in these examples, too, the relative connector can be other than ce: ) a. Și iaste țarina lui Efron [carea era în and is field.deflui.genEphron which was in peștira cea îndoită] (bb.1688, 15) cave.defcel.f.acc.sgbent 'It is Ephron's field that the cave was in' b.Au nu iaste acesta [den carele bea Out of all these, there are not many books those that came up in Romanian from Serbian and Greek' (bb.1688, 635)the.one that să subj mention.subj.3sgpath.defher 'There is no one but him that is supposed to know it's way or mention it's path' (15) a. Fu It was his son who was the greatest in the village'