Infinitival relative clauses and Italian clefts
Infinitival relative clauses and Italian clefts

Summary/Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of the licensing of infinitival subject relative clauses by clefts. I claim that infinitival subject relatives are licensed by a contrastive focus. I assume that in Italian clefts always express a contrastive focus, which makes them licensors of infinitival subject relative clauses as opposed to English and French in which a cleft does not necessarily have to be contrastive. I furthermore claim that the infinitival relative clause is a complement, which would account for the fact that it allows extraction.

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