On WH and polar (basic) interrogative clefts

Abstract

The article describes the behavior of the basic interrogative cleft in Brazilian Portuguese, which have not received much attention in the literature. Studies on cleft sentences usually focus on declarative ones; and studies on interrogatives consider “cleft questions” to be those in which the copula is omitted or in which the WH phrase precedes the copula, which correspond to inverted clefts, not basic clefts. In this paper, I focus on WH and polar interrogatives with the structure “É __ que” (‘is __that’). By analyzing data collected from Internet and from acceptability judgments, the paper describes WH and polar clefts’ properties, discussing unexpected facts such as the unacceptability of WH clefts in indirect questions and the interpretation of partial question in polar clefts. It offers an analysis based on focal movement with no [+Wh] triggered movement. Finally, it also discusses the nature of the presupposition (of existence or of uniqueness / completeness) encoded by clefts, unveiling that WH clefts and polar clefts offer contradictory evidence about this phenomenon.