From syntax to discourse to prosody and from prosody to discourse (to syntax?): the case of IT-clefts
Résumé
We closely examine occurrences of it-clefts in a corpus of (semi)-spontaneous English in order to determine the relations between syntax, discourse and prosody. Starting from the canonical, expected prosody of it-clefts, which can be found in grammars of English, we wonder how frequent this prosody can be in discourse, and when non-canonical, what its role can be. We claim that if syntax determines the information structure of the message, prosody can react on the information structure to change it, but it can also have a role at a very different level. It can express the informativeness of the various parts of the message, or convey the speaker's attitude. We distinguish between givenness and informativeness (which is close to communicative dynamism), even if those two notions can overlap.