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Experimental studies on it-clefts and predicate interpretation

Paper · 2019 · Agata Renans and Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss

Summary

Semanticists disagree about whether a negated it-cleft about one person can be followed by a sentence saying that this person and someone else performed the action. The homogeneity approach (Büring & Križ 2013, Križ 2016, 2017) treats a cleft as an identity statement. It predicts a truth-value gap whenever the pivot is only part of the group, so such sequences should always be odd, whatever the predicate. Alternative-based accounts (Horn 1981, Velleman et al. 2012, Renans 2016a,b) split a cleft into an asserted part, equal to its plain SVO sentence, and a separate exhaustive inference. That split leaves room for the predicate's reading to matter. The authors ran three acceptability experiments: the first presented the stimuli in writing, and the remaining two presented them as audio. They used mixed predicates such as do the dishes or carry the wardrobe, with a short preceding context forcing either a distributive or a joint reading, and compared clefts with SVO counterparts. In all three studies, sequences with distributively understood predicates got lower ratings than those with joint readings. This replicated effect challenges the homogeneity view and helps separate rival theories of cleft exhaustivity.

Key points

  • Under homogeneity, a cleft is true if the pivot equals the mereological sum of doers, false if it does not overlap that sum, and undefined otherwise. Negation swaps true and false but keeps the undefined case.
  • Three experiments were run: one with written materials and two with auditory materials. Each item had distributive and non-distributive context versions, paired with either an it-cleft or an SVO control sentence.
  • Items used mixed predicates (push the car, build a table, lift the fridge, rob a bank, solve the equation, paint a mural, and others). Contexts used cues like separate times or places versus doing it "together." This lets the authors stay neutral on whether mixed predicates are underspecified or ambiguous.
  • Main finding: distributive readings lowered acceptability compared with non-distributive ones, robustly across all three studies. This fits alternative-based accounts.
  • Section 4 discusses metalinguistic negation as a possible escape route for homogeneity. The work was funded by DFG SFB 1287 (Project C02) and XPrag.de SPP 1727.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. The same target sentence pair is kept fixed while a one- or two-sentence context forces one reading, so the measured effect comes from interpretation rather than wording.
  • I2. A plain SVO version of every cleft item serves as a baseline, separating the construction's contribution from the general oddness of the correction.
  • I3. Plural participation is treated as three-valued (only X / not X at all / X among others), with negation leaving the middle case untouched.
  • I4. A cleft is modelled as an ordinary assertion plus a separate, non-asserted exclusivity inference.
  • I5. Mixed predicates are disambiguated by explicit contextual cues such as "together," "on their own," or distinct times and places.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (answer): Build QA probes where one question follows two different mini-stories, checking that the answer flips with the forced reading rather than with surface words.
  • I2 (learn): Pair each construction-specific test with a structurally plain twin as a negative control, so improvements on clefts or other constructions aren't confused with generic gains.
  • I3 (world): Let the world model answer "X took part, but not alone" instead of forcing yes/no when an event has a plural agent and the question names one member.
  • I4 (frames): In prag, map an it-cleft to the same agent frame as its SVO sentence and attach exhaustivity as a cancellable implicature, so a later plural correction revises the implicature rather than contradicting the frame.
  • I5 (world): Use these cues to decide whether "A and B did P" creates one joint event or two separate events, which affects counting, event ordering, and holdings.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓University of PotsdamPotsdam · Germany36 works · 5,236 citations🎓Ruhr University BochumBochum · Germany20 works · 1,151 citations

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Computer Science · 9,086 worksArtificial Intelligence · 8,889 worksArts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 worksPhilosophy · 211 works

Cite

Cite as Agata Renans and Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss. 2019. Experimental studies on it-clefts and predicate interpretation. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.3765/sp.12.11

@article{renans2019experimental,
  title = {{Experimental studies on it-clefts and predicate interpretation}},
  author = {Agata Renans and Joseph P. {De Veaugh-Geiss}},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.12.11},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.12.11}
}

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