Clefts 375
As with relative clauses, clefting of an oblique argument, such as a goal, gener-
ally requires the appropriate verbal morphology. Thus, clefting the goal of the
verb kerem ‘send’ requires both object voice and the locative suffix, as in (170).
(170) Adi se e-kerem-e paket bi' Bambang.
Adi REL OV-send-LOC package by Bambang
‘Adi is who Bambang sent a package.’
The Madurese cleft is an exhaustive focus construction. That is, the
clefted element exhausts the set of elements which satisfy the state of affairs
denoted by the clause. So, in (165), Ita is the only one in the set established in
the discourse for whom the proposition ‘read Hasan’s book’ is true. This is ela-
borated below in section 9.1.
The similarity in the restrictions on clefts and relative clauses is due to the
structure of the cleft construction. As has been proposed in Cole, Hermon, and
Aman (2008) for Singapore Malay and Paul (2001) for Malagasy, the Madurese
cleft is a pseudo-cleft in which the clefted element is actually the NP predicate
of the clause and in which the subject is a headless relative clause. So, for ex-
ample, in (166) Adi is the NP predicate and se ekereme paket bi' Bambang ‘(the
one) who was sent a package by Bambang’ is the subject. In the cleft in (170),
the NP predicate Adi has been fronted. This occurs regularly in Madurese as
well as Singapore Malay and Indonesian (Sneddon 1996). Equally grammatical
are the counterparts in (171-174), in which the focused element occurs in stan-
dard predicate position, following the subject.
(171) Se maca buku-na Hasan Ita.
REL AV.read book-DEF Hasan Ita
‘The one who read Hasan’s book is Ita.’
(172) Se e-baca Ita buku-na Hasan.
REL OV-read Ita book-DEF Hasan
‘What Ita read is Hasan’s book.’
(173) Se buku-na e-baca Ita Hasan.
REL book-DEF OV-read Ita Hasan
‘The one whose book Ita read is Hasan.’
(174) Se e-kerem-e paket bi' Bambang Adi.
REL OV-send-LOC package by Bambang Adi
‘Who Bambang sent a package is Adi.’
Data regarding keya described in section 9.2 point to the correctness of this
analysis.