Pragmatic Functions of Spanish Sentence Types with Postverbal Subjects and English Clefts, Apuntes de Inglés

¡Descarga Pragmatic Functions of Spanish Sentence Types with Postverbal Subjects and English Clefts y más Apuntes en PDF de Inglés solo en Docsity! 127 ABSTRACT This paper shows the similarities in terms of pragmatic function of specific Spanish sentence types with postverbal subjects and English clefts. An overview of the discourse functions performed by cleft constructions in English is presented followed by examples from a corpus of translations where clefts have been selected in the rendering not only of similar cleft constructions in Spanish but of Spanish sentences with verb-subject order, such as intransitive VS clauses with a focal contrastive subject, OVS with a focal object (frontings), OVS with a topical object or a clitic object (left-dislocations) and VS constructions with initial topical adverbials (AVS). The comparison adds support to the widely acknowledged belief that rigid word order languages like English need to make use of marked syntactic constructions in order to convey some of the pragmatic emphases which more flexible word order languages like Spanish can achieve via word order alone. 1. INTRODUCTION The database and the research conducted for this paper are part of a larger project I carried out recently for my PhD. My thesis (Pinedo 1997) aimed to investigate the discourse-pragmatic functions of postverbal subjects in Spanish and how they are rendered in translation. One of the methods employed by translators consists of clausal extraposition or cleft sentences. In this paper I will focus on such constructions. First, I will begin by describing what the term cleft refers to, how clefts are formed and some of the classifications of clefts which appear in the literature. English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects Alicia PINEDO University of Lancaster Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense ISSN: 1133-0392 2000, 8: 127-151 1.1. Description of data The database from which the examples in this paper are taken consists of a corpus of Spanish original texts from three different genres: short stories, plays and magazine articles together with their published translations into English. As regards the fictional texts, the main advantage of collecting data from literature is not only the variety of authors, styles and easy access to the translations which this genre permits but also the official status of the translations as published texts. Similarly, literary data facilitate the possibility of studying different versions of a translation, which lends itself to interesting comparison 1. Short stories were chosen to the detriment of novels mainly due to the advantage of their length which allows a high variety of authors, translators and styles to be covered within the time available. Plays, on the other hand, were selected since they provide a small sample of written language mirroring oral speech, and more interestingly, potential colloquial types or instances of Spanish VS order which might be absent in the rest of the data. The magazine articles are taken from the air-flight magazine Ronda-Iberia, published monthly by Iberia. They provide an excellent source of data because they include a wide range of articles from different genres such as news, reports, reviews, short stories and advice for travellers. Furthermore, the translations are regularly done by different teams of professional translators, which contributes to ensuring stylistic diversity, avoiding recurrent idiosyncratic preferences or tendencies. Additionally, the fact that all the translations of the magazine articles as well as of most of the other data are the work of native English speakers also ensures or at least favours natural utterances in the target language. This is an important point for this study since the target language of the data is not my native tongue, which is far from the ideal for a translator or translation-text analyst. Therefore, although I am aware that some instances of the data may sound forced or odd to some native speakers, I assume that the majority, if not all, will be perfectly acceptable elegant English utterances. In the next sections I will move on to the study of clefts in my corpus. I will begin by describing what the term cleft refers to, how clefts are formed and some of the classifications of clefts which appear in the literature. 1.2. What are clefts? The term “cleft” is commonly used in grammar to refer to the extraposition and isolation of a sentence constituent by using the copulative verb to be. This Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 128 2000, 8: 125-151 (2) It-cleft: animate focus It was John who I saw. Fue Juan al que/a quien vi. Was John whom saw-I (3) Canonical pseudo-cleft: inanimate focus What John lost was his keys. Lo que perdió Juan fueron las llaves/lo que Juan perdió fueron las llaves. What lost John were the keys what John lost were the keys (4) Canonical pseudo-cleft: animate focus The one who is coming with us is John. El que viene con nosotros es Juan/Quien viene con nosotros es Juan. the one who comes with us is John who comes with us is John (5) Inverted pseudo-cleft: inanimate focus That was what John lost. Eso fue lo que perdió Juan that was what lost John (6) Inverted pseudo-cleft: animate focus John is the one who is coming with us. Juan es quien/el que viene con nosotros. John is who/ the one who comes with us As can be seen in (1) above, English makes the verb to be singular when it is shifted to the head of a cleft sentence, whereas in Spanish there is always agreement between the verb and the focused element. Moreover, Spanish clefts require the nominalizer el/la/los/las que/quien(es) which agrees in number and gender with the noun it replaces. In other words, Spanish que on its own cannot join the two parts of a cleft unlike English that. Only a nominalizer (el que or quien) can be used as the following example taken from Butt and Benjamin (1994:461) illustrates: (7) Es este coche el que compré is this car the-one-which bought-I This car is the one I bought (not *Es este coche que compré) Furthermore, clauses of time, place or manner require a preposition instead of the pronoun, unlike in English: Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects 131 Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2000, 8: 125-151 (8) It was in Madrid that I was born. Fue en Madrid donde nací. Was in Madrid where was born-I As all the previous examples show, Spanish does not have a clear distinction between clefts and pseudo-clefts. This has led some linguists to consider that in fact Spanish does not have proper clefts at all but only pseudo- cleft constructions (Moreno Cabrera 1987, Barcelona Sánchez 1983 in Martínez Caro 1995:164). In this paper I will not elaborate further on that issue because it is not directly relevant as only English clefts are considered. 2. PRAGMATIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CLEFT SENTENCES 2.1. It-clefts vs. Wh-clefts It-clefts and wh-clefts have been contrasted as performing different functions in discourse. Prince (1978) claims that in spite of the fact that they have often received a similar treatment in grammar, on the basis that they were interchangeable (cf. Bolinger 1972, Chafe 1975, in Prince ibid.) they differ not only in syntax and semantics but also pragmatically. From a pragmatic point of view, Prince distinguishes clefts from pseudo- clefts according to the type of information that the subordinate clause conveys in relation to that of the antecedent or focused element. According to Prince, whereas the that-clause in an it-cleft can contain either given or new information, initial wh-clauses normally convey given information, either anaphoric or inferrable from implicatures by “bridge-building”, that is, linking the clause in point with the previous discourse, as in the following: (9) Himself a religious Jew, Prof. Flusser says that Carter’s piety is not the problem. “What I’m worried about”, he declares,..... In (9) the reader builds an inferrable bridge between a problem and worrying about it. The first sentence tells us indirectly that there is a problem and informs us directly that Carter’s piety is not it. Similarly, for Sornicola (1988: 372) the main difference between clefts and pseudo-clefts would lie in the informative status of both the focused element (typically given in the cleft and new in the pseudo-cleft) and the subordinate clause, which is always given in the wh-cleft but can be either given or new in the it-cleft. Furthermore, it is often claimed that clefts cannot occur as the initial utterances of discourse. Pseudo-clefts, by contrast, often appear as first Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 132 2000, 8: 125-151 utterances in communication (cf. Hetzron 1975, Givón 1984). For instance, Givón claims that clefts are rather odd in discourse-initial contexts. It is thus perfectly acceptable to introduce a lecture-topic by the pseudo-cleft but odd with the cleft. This is so because “a certain build-up of contrary expectations must take place in the preceding portion of the current thematic unit” (1990: 710-711). However, cleft sentences can in fact occur initially (see example (12) below from my data, or examples in Prince 1978 or Lambrecht 1994). When this is the case the information contained in the presupposition-clause is indeed new to the addressee but it is presented as a known fact. Therefore, the reader has to “willingly accommodate” the presupposition to its context (Lambrecht 1994: 25). A similar explanation for the occurrance of initial clefts is presented in Prince (ibid.), who solves the problem of felicitous initial it- clefts by distinguishing between two different types of it-clefts according to their discourse function. They are described below. 2.2. It-clefts: types and functions From a discourse-pragmatic point of view Prince classifies clefts in two types, namely “stressed-focus” and “informative-presupposition” it-clefts. In the former the focused element is usually new and contrastive whereas the that-clause tends to convey presupposed information. This type is exemplified in (10) taken from Prince: (10) So I learned to sew books. They are really good books. It’s just the covers that are rotten. Conversely, in the second type, i.e. “informative-presupposition”, the information conveyed by the that-clause is new because it is not inferrable or presupposed to be in the reader/hearer’s consciousness. “In fact, the whole point of these sentences is to inform the hearer of that very information” (ibid.: 898). Witness the following example also from Prince: (11) It was just about 50 years ago that Henry Ford gave us the weekend. On September 25, 1926, in a somewhat shocking move for the time, he decided to establish a 40-hour work week, giving his employees two days off instead of one. (11) would be odd in canonical order according to Prince, because it would seem as though the newspaper had just discovered the fact. The it-cleft “serves to mark it as a known fact, unknown only to the readership”. In contrast with wh-clauses or stressed focus it-clefts, in this type of cleft the information contained in the that-clause is “presupposed logico-semantically” Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects 133 Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2000, 8: 125-151 ‘Then it was that a gypsy from San Roman district cofradia gave one of the popular theology lessons so typical of the festival.” (April 92) Reason adjunct as focus (18) “Por eso fue que se me ocurrió que podíamos visitar al Ministro.” Because of that was that it occurred to me that we could visit the minister ‘It was because of this that it occurred to me that we might go and see the Minister.’ (El presupuesto) Finally, the focus can also be, less frequently, an anaphoric object. Object NPs are reported to be rare in it-clefts of the type “informative-presupposition” (Prince Ibid.). As expected, they are also rare in my data, not only in it-clefts but also in wh-clefts. All occurrences in the corpus involve extraposition or right-dislocation. Witness, for example (19): (19) “Es de eso de lo que quizás nos acordemos aquí más seguido: de aquel is of that of which perhaps we remember here more of that Tanilo que nosotros enterramos en el camposanto.” Tanilo who we buried in the church yard ‘Because it is that that we will remember here most often: that Tanilo we buried in the church yard.’ (Talpa) A similar case is presented in (20), where an inverted pseudo-cleft is employed instead, with the same function: (20) “Lo que usted dice se llama el libro talonario —dijo gravemente el jefe. Pues what you say is called the stub-book said gravely the boss since esto es lo que yo traigo aquí: el libro talonario de mi huerta, o sea los tallos this is what I bring here.... a los que estaban unidas estas calabazas antes de que me las robara ese ladrón.” ‘What you are talking about is called the stub-book, said the inspector gravely. Well, that’s what I have here: the stub-book of my garden, that, is the stems to which these pumpkins were attached before this thief stole them from me.’ (El libro talonario) Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 136 2000, 8: 125-151 Inverted wh-clefts, like the one in (20) above, differ from canonical pseudo-clefts in that the wh-clause occurs after the focused element, as was mentioned above. Such constructions have received little attention in the literature as far as I am aware. Prince only suggests that their discourse function is probably more similar to an it-cleft than to a canonical wh-cleft. A similar view is defended by Halliday (1994: 41). For this linguist the main difference is one of Theme and markedness, i.e. whereas canonical pseudo- clefts constitute nominalized unmarked Themes, inverted clefts represent marked alternatives, “in which the usual relationship is reversed and the nominalization becomes the Rheme”. In his framework, it-clefts also constitute marked predicated Themes. Therefore, it-clefts are more similar in thematic organization to inverted wh-clefts than to canonical ones. An interesting and more detailed discussion of inverted wh-clefts and clefts in discourse is presented by Geluykens (1988, 1991) on the basis of a corpus of spoken English data. He proposes two main types of clefts which he calls “filler- focus” and “proposition/clause-focus”. In Geluykens’ terminology the focus of a cleft or pseudo-cleft is called the filler, i.e. the extraposed constituent placed directly after or before the copula, as opposed to the wh/that clause. The first type, “filler-focus”, coincides roughly with Prince’s “stressed-focus clefts” above described, and includes cases where the filler is focal, usually new or irrecoverable and/or contrastive. In such constructions the filler carries the most salient or highlighted information, whereas the Proposition or clause represents background information. Canonical pseudo-clefts would all fall under this type as well. In fact, such constructions are particularly suitable for introducing a large amount of irrecoverable information; often the filler is an entire clause, as in (21): (21) “A mí me importa lo que tengo entre mis manos.” to me me matters what have:I between my hands ‘What matters to me is what I can hold with my hands.’ (Yerma) In the second type, i.e. “clause-focus”, however, the situation is reversed; here it is the proposition or clause (i.e. the that/wh-clause) which is highlighted, whereas the filler carries background information and is usually short. This second type resembles Prince’s “informative-presupposition/given focus” category presented earlier. Inverted pseudo-clefts all display such a distribution of information too, namely a given filler and a new/focal clause. Therefore, under this interpretation, canonical pseudo-clefts resemble “filler- focus” it-clefts. Inverted pseudo-clefts, on the other hand, are similar to “clause-focus” clefts. The main difference between Geluykens’ analysis of clefts and that of Prince described above, or other interpretations present in the literature (Givón Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects 137 Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2000, 8: 125-151 1984, Sornicola 1988, Lambrecht 1994), is the fact that he does not associate filler with focus in cleft constructions. In fact, in his study, the so-called “clause-focus” it-clefts, as well as inverted pseudo-clefts, do not display a focal filler. The focus lies in the that/wh-clause as opposed to the item occupying the filler in such structures, which is typically short, given and non- focal. This is partly the reason why he employs the label filler instead of focus to refer to the extraposed item 3. The type of constituents which each type of cleft typically takes, also seem to support Geluykens’ analysis. For instance, filler-focus it-clefts usually take a subject as filler. This is not surprising since their discourse function can be regarded as a technique for moving the focal and/or contrastive subject away from initial position, and for placing it as far to the right as possible, given the limitations of the SVX pattern in English. Conversely, subject-filler clause- focus it-clefts preserve the topic > focus and short > long order. Thus, in such structures, the clause tends to be longer that the filler (see examples (14)-(16) above repeated here as (22)-(24): (22) “Los sevillanos contemplan las imágenes de sus cofradías como algo the Sevillians contemplate the images of their cofradias as something vivo. Es Dios quien está en la calle, no les cabe la menor duda.” alive is God who is in the street not to them have the least doubt ‘Sevillians watch the images belonging to the Cofradías as though these were alive. No doubt about it, it is God who is here in the street.’ (April 92) (23) “...compuestas por obreros de piedra sagaz. Son ellos quienes diseñan y made by workers of stone are they who design and escriben el suelo que pisamos todos los días.” write the pavement which we-tread all the days ‘It is they who draw and write on the pavements that we tread each day.’ (April 94) (24) “Era la muchacha —todavía una niña— la que escuchaba fascinada was the girl still a child the-one who listened fascinated las historias del hombre del carromato, que llegaba precedido por los the stories of-the man in the caravan.... ladridos de Nei, unas veces en la puerta de la cabaña y otras veces junto al fuego, en invierno, pues de ese modo él agradecía la hospitalidad, a la ida o al regreso.” ‘It was the girl, still a child, who would listen in fascination to the tales of the waggoner, whose arrival was always heralded by Nei’s barking.’ (La dama del agua) Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 138 2000, 8: 125-151 i.e. in non presentational constructions, as well as in the translation of AVS and OVS clauses when the initial constituent is given and topical. The two cases are illustrated in the next sections. 3.1. Contrastive subjects When the subject in Spanish VS order conveys contrastive information, as in (30) below, the translation via a “filler-focus” it-cleft maintains its focality and markedness. (30) “Se enteran los mirones, y uno no se entera! Ni de find out the nosy-parkers and one not finds out neither of lo bueno ni de lo malo!” the good nor of the bad! ’It’s the nosy-parkers that see everything, good or bad, and you don’t see a thing yourself!’ (Los cuernos de Don Friolera) In such cases a mere syntactic transfer via SV order would have shifted the referent of the SC focal subject into the topic of the TC. Consequently, the information structure and the message conveyed would have also been altered. If the subject is heavy (long and/or complex) as well as contrastive, such as a clause, a canonical pseudo-cleft is preferred (i.e. also a “filler-focus” construction in Geluykens’ terminology). Such a construction keeps the same linear order (given > new, comment > focus) and allows end-weight, as shown in the following examples: (31) “A mí me importa lo que tengo entre mis manos.” to me me matters what have:I between my hands ‘What matters to me is what I can hold with my hands.’ (Yerma) (32) “Pero sí existe, al pie del castillo, la Cueva de la Morica Encantada, but yes exists at foot of-the castle the cave of the mooress enchanted... abierta entre las rocas que sustentan lo que queda del murallón, un agujero en el piso en rápida pendiente hacia una impenetrable oscuridad que se adivina cegada por las piedras que los hombres y el tiempo han ido acumulando.” ‘What does exist at the foot of the castle, however, is the Cave of the Enchanted Mooress, which opens into the rocks supporting the remains of the walls.’ (Añoranzas) Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects 141 Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2000, 8: 125-151 Canonical wh-clefts, as those in the preceding instances always focalize the item in the filler, unlike inverted ones. 3.2. LDs and clVS VS clauses with preverbal clitic objects, as in (20) above, and LDs of the object, exemplified in (34), typically display a connective function in Spanish. In addition, they often perform an introductory function of the referent of the postverbal subject in clause final position. When the subject is not heavy, the “filler-focus” it-cleft provides an optimal pragmatic equivalent because it preserves the focality of the subject and its non-initial position, unlike in a literal rendering. Witness the following cases: (33) “Le mató la tristeza de verse ciego.” him killed the sadness of see-himself blind ‘It was the sorrow of being blind that killed him.’ (Luces de bohemia) (34) “La flor del negocio se la llevan las acciones liberadas.” the flower of-the business it carry the actions liberated ‘It’s the insider dealing that creams off the best part of the profits.’ (Los cuernos de Don Friolera) In (35) below, occurring in dialogue, the inverted pseudo-cleft (i.e. “clause- focus”) maintains the topicality/givenness of the object in initial position, while preserving the informative value and focality of the source-clause subject. Note that the filler is a demonstrative pronoun, as is common in spoken discourse (cf. Geluykens 1988): (35) “Eso lo dicen las madres dóciles, las quejumbrosas.” That it say the mothers weak the complainers ‘That”s what weak, complaining, mothers say.’ (La casa de Bernarda Alba) 3.3. Frontings Initial focal objects in Spanish usually occur in clauses with pronominal, omitted or non-final subjects. The initial object/complement can be both given or new but usually constitutes the focus of the utterance, unlike in LDs discussed in Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 142 2000, 8: 125-151 the preceding section. As the objects/complements in frontings are focal, such constructions are usually rendered into English via canonical order. This is particularly the case when no final adjuncts occur in the sentence, thereby maintaining the object in a focal position. Alternatively, they can be rendered via fronting/topicalization in English, i.e. OSV, which also keeps the object in a focal and marked position. The latter option of translation only occurs in the data from the dialogues. This is only to be expected since such structures typically occur in conversation in English. Similarly, when the object conveys given information, clefts are also employed in the dialogues, as in the following: (36) “(Arrebata un bastón a su madre y lo parte en dos) Esto hago yo grabs a stick to her mother and it breaks into two) This do I con la vara de la dominadora.” with the stick of the ruler ‘This is what I do with the tyrant’s cane.’ (La casa de Bernarda Alba) (37) “¿El D.M. sabes? Ése soy yo.” The D.M. know: you That am I ‘That’s who I am.’ (El costo de la vida) (38) “Y a esto llaman justicia los ricos canallas!” and to that call justice the rich bastards ‘And that’s what the rich bastards call justice!’ (Luces de bohemia) In the preceding instances, the selection of an inverted wh-cleft in the translation preserves the initial placement of the given object/complement. In addition, when the subject of the source clause is heavy, such a construction contributes to ensuring end-weight. (39) and (40) are two cases in point: (39) “Eso tiene la gente que nace con posibles.” that have the people who are-born with obligations ‘That’s the way it has to be for people who have certain obligations.’ (Yerma) (40) “Eso decía el señor cura desde allá arriba del púlpito.” that said the mister priest from there up of-the pulpit ‘That is what the priest said from up there in the pulpit.’ (San Manuel) Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects 143 Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2000, 8: 125-151 (51) “Así surgió lo que unos llaman la invención del sepulcro del apóstol like-this rose what some call the invention of-the sepulchre of-the apostle Santiago y otros afirman el descubrimiento de su tumba.” ‘And that is how what some call the invention and others the discovery of the sepulchre of the apostle St. James the Elder came about.’ (July 93) 4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS In this paper we have seen how clausal extraposition is employed in the translation into English of Spanish sentences with postverbal subjects. This in itself does not mean that the two constructions are equivalent. Furthermore, VS clauses in Spanish vary greatly in terms of the pragmatic function assignment of each constituent in the same way as not all clefts have a single pragmatic function. However, different types of clefts in English seem to perform a similar pragmatic function as certain verb-subject constructions in Spanish, as the data from translations suggest. Translators, in a conscious or intuitive way, select the most suitable construction in the relevant context which conveys all the meaning of the source text structure. In most of the cases we have witnessed above, a canonical translation via subject-verb order in English would fail to render the discourse function and information flow encoded in the linear order of the original sentence. The examples shown reveal how clefts are employed in translation in the following contexts: first, as a strategy to assign prominence to constituents with a focal-contrastive function. Thus, “filler-focus” clefts are used for rendering contrastive subjects of intransitive VS clauses. Such constructions are especially successful when the subject is not heavy, since the filler in those clefts is typically short. As Geluykens points out (1991: 351) focal fillers tend to be relatively short (less than four words) in spite of being highlighted, (although still longer than given fillers which typically display only one word). He believes that this is partly due to the fact that “filler-focus” it-clefts run counter to the general linguistic tendency of placing focal/new information later in the clause than topical/given one, which makes such structures more difficult for the hearer to process. The speaker, therefore, feels obliged to limit the amount of highlighted information in the filler. Another factor which explains the “shortness” of the filler constituent in “filler-focus” clefts, is that the fillers in those clefts tend to be contrastive, i.e. one single piece of information, usually of restricted length, is contrasted with something else. Conversely, when the contrastive postverbal subject in Spanish is heavy, canonical pseudo-clefts, i.e. also “filler-focus” constructions, are preferred instead, since they allow end-weight, unlike their it-clefts counterparts. Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 146 2000, 8: 125-151 Secondly, clefts can be employed as a device to front topical objects and adverbials. Inverted wh-clefts with a demonstrative filler provide a successful transference from the pragmatic point of view, of AVS order with an initial adverbial of time, place and manner. They typically display a given filler and a focal wh-clause. Therefore, they maintain the initial position of the adverbial and the focal position of the subject. Similarly, they can also be employed to translate Spanish OVS and CVS order when the object/complement is given, while simultaneously the informational value of the SC subject is preserved through insertion in the target clause focal wh-clause. The latter clause typically contains the informative message of the utterance. Finally, it is important to emphasize that this study is based on clefts found in translation data. Therefore, caution is advisable when drawing generalizations. The small size of the corpus and the restricted type of data can also have an effect on the results 4. Obviously, more research needs to be done on real occurrences of clefts in English and in Spanish as well as in spontaneous discourse. However, it is hoped that the data and reflections here presented can be of use particularly in translation and language teaching. NOTES 1 Within literature, poetry was left out due to the potential occurrence of hyperbatos and marked structures as well as poetic licenses which could bring a different and complex parameter into the study. For similar reasons, the advertisements of the magazines were also ignored. 2 An interlineal translation (word-for-word gloss) is given for all the examples. In the examples extracted from the corpus, this translation is followed by a bracketed line, which specifies the source of the text: for the short stories the full title is given. As for the texts of the magazines, the information which appears in brackets includes the year and month of the issue where the example was found. When two or more examples belong to the same text, the title appears only at the end of the list (see Appendix for the full notation of all the texts included in the corpus). The glosses provide an approximate literal word-for-word rendering of the source clause. They do not include grammatical information. They appear in italics for easy identification. For similar reasons, the Spanish clause is enclosed by double inverted commas and the translation in between single ones. When two translations are available they are referred to as (a) and (b) respectively. 3 Halliday (1994:301-2) presents a similar classification of it-clefts based on their marked or unmarked information focus, and the mapping between Theme and New information: Unmarked (local) Theme: It is you who were to blame. (Theme/New-Rheme/Given) Marked Theme: It is you who were to blame. (Theme/Given-Rheme/New) 4 Clefts are employed in the data less frequently than other strategies, as reflected in the quantitative analysis. They are mainly employed in the translation of magazine reports and in the dialogues of the plays (4 %) as opposed to the narratives where they are particularly rare (1.2 %). Perhaps the most unexpected finding concerns the similar frequency of clefts as a method of translation in the dialogues of the plays and in the magazine reports (3.9 % and 4 %). One factor which contributes to this result is the fact that clefts often translate frontings of the object as well Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects 147 Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2000, 8: 125-151 as AVS clauses with initial given adverbials of manner, place and reason, which are common in conversation. Besides, such clauses are more appropriately rendered by means of clefts than via the passive or transitivisation since the latter constructions are of more formal nature, and thus inadequate in the translation of dialogues. See table below for the actual figures. TABLE 1 Use of clefts in the corpus Genre Total VS clauses Clefts as a method of translation Short 784 10 Stories 1.2 % Ronda 227 9 Magazines 3.9 % Plays 325 13 4.0 % Total 1336 32 2.3 % Department of European Languages and Cultures Lonsdale College Lancaster University Bailrigg Lancaster LA1 4YG E-mail: A.Pinedo@lancs.ac.uk REFERENCES Baker, Mona (1992). In Other Words. London: Routledge. Barcelona Sánchez, Antonio (1983). El orden de los constituyentes en inglés y en español. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Universidad de Granada. Bolinger, Dwight (1972). A look at equations and cleft sentences. In Firchow, Evelyn Scherabon et al (1972) (eds.), pp. 96-114. Borkin, Ann (1984). Problems in Form and Function. Norwood, N.G.: Ablex. Butt, J. & Benjamin, C. (1988, 1994). A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. London: Arnold. Chafe, W.L. (1975). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and points of view. In Li (ed.), pp. 27-55. Alicia Pinedo English clefts as discourse-pragmatic equivalents of Spanish postverbal subjects Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 148 2000, 8: 125-151