CLEFT AND PSEUDO-CLEFT CONSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH - COLLINS,PC

This review article offers some criticism of Collins (1991). The autho r challenges Collins' basic claim that, as far as their information st ructure is concerned, clefts, and pseudo-clefts require a different ty pe of taxonomy (more specifically that the three type classification o f clefts cannot be extended to pseudo-clefts). He also argues that Col lins tends to overrate the importance of such distinctions as given/ne w and theme/rheme and uses them to explain certain phenomena that are actually to be traced to the specificational (identifying) nature of t he constructions.