Pseudocleft Sentences in Spoken Italian. Syntax, Semantics, Information Structure, and a Comparison with Spanish

The paper presents an analysis of pseudocleft sentences (PC) in spoken Italian and in contrast with Spanish. The analysis of a spontaneous spoken corpus highlights that the most frequent structures in Italian correspond to th- and NP-PC, and that they are much more frequent in formal than in informal speech. The paper focuses on the informational analysis of Italian th-PC in comparison with Spanish, in the light of the Language into Act Theory. Even if this structure is much more frequent in Spanish, both languages make use of the same basic information pattern for authentic PC (Topic-Comment). Spanish also shows other configurations, mainly corresponding to semi-grammaticalized expressions, which should not be considered proper PC.