The Focus map of clefts: Extraposition and Predication

A cartographic analysis for new information subject clefts and corrective/contrastive object/nonsubject clefts is presented that expresses in a principled way - based on locality/Relativized Minimality - the different forms of focalization that clefts may realize. It is furthermore proposed that a local relation is established with the dummy quasiargument subject of clefts and the predicate FinP clause in the CP small clause complement of the copula, which is ultimately at the origin of the process of extraposition occurring in clefts. The process is often assumed in previous and recent literature and is systematically visible cross-linguistically. Interpretive and syntactic properties of the structures investigated follow from the cartographic approach implement