Persian Cleft Constructions and Syntactic Theories

Generally speaking, cleft constructions are marked syntactic structures, which represent a simple logical proposition by two clauses. The relation of these constructions to more basic structures is determined in regard with the theoretical framework chosen for the analysis. In the one hand, transformational studies try to determine the underlying structure through using cleft construction features. If copular sentences were considered as the basic structure for cleft constructions, the chosen analysis would be an extrapositioal one, and in the case of relating these structures to non-cleft structures, expletive analysis would be given. Recent efforts on studying cleft constructions will not be accommodated in none of the approaches above, on the other hand. Eventually, this paper indicates that transformational approaches can not well afford explaining these sentences, and thus a non-transformational approach must be chosen.