Lithuanian and the syntactic structure of pseudo-clefts

Abstract The article deals with the pseudo-cleft construction (also known as wh-cleft) in Lithuanian, a Baltic language. It focuses on the syntactic and morphosyntactic changes that have set the Lithuanian pseudo-cleft apart from its source construction, the specificational copular construction. It is argued that this pseudo-cleft has become monoclausal as a result of a process in which the kernel component of the pseudo-cleft construction (consisting of relative pronoun, relative-clause verb and copula/focus marker) became non-compositional and started occupying a slot corresponding to that of the simple-clause verb. This process may have been driven by the morphosyntactic marking assigned by the relative-clause verb being copied onto the focus noun phrase and subsequently being reanalysed as governed by the pseudo-cleft kernel component as a whole. As a result of these processes, the Lithuanian pseudo-cleft is superficially still similar to the original specificational construction from which it derives, but certain morphosyntactic and syntactic features betray it as being monoclausal. The Lithuanian pseudo-cleft is further considered against a cross-linguistic background to point out that it represents a non-trivial and typologically interesting instantiation of the more general process of development of clefts and pseudo-clefts into monoclausal structures.