Clefts 379book. This is due to the combination of the cleft construction and the adverbial
keya ‘too’. The use of keya implies that B agrees that Ita read Hasan’s book, but
the cleft construction denotes that in B’s estimation Tono is the only other per-
son who read the book.
Next, a subset of the elements identified in a cleft cannot itself be asserted
in a separate cleft construction. This is illustrated in (187a-c).(187) a. Ita ban Tono se maca buku-na Hasan.
Ita and Tono REL AV.read book-DEF Hasan
‘Ita and Tono are who read Hasan’s book.’b. Ita se maca buku-na Hasan.
Ita REL AV.read book-DEF Hasan
‘Ita is who read Hasan’s book.’
(incoherent and false proposition if (a) is true)c. Ita maca buku-na Hasan.
Ita AV.read book-DEF Hasan
‘Ita read Hasan’s book.’
(coherent and entailed by (a))Thus, given the assertion in the cleft in (187a), the statement in (187b) is false.
In (187b), only a subset of the set in (187a) is asserted in the cleft. This contra-
dicts the exhaustive listing reading in (187a), as it asserts that Ita exhausts the
set of those who read Hasan’s book and excludes Tono. The cleft in (187a) does
entail the simple assertion in (187c) that Ita read the book as Ita is included in
the full set of those reading the book.
Third, the fact that the headless relative clause establishes the presupposi-
tion of a set of elements satisfying the state of affairs is also indicated by the
entailment of its negation. If the presuppositional clause is negated, as it is in
(188), this entails that the remainder of the candidate set is positive.(188) Burus se ta' ngekke' Ali.
dog REL not AV.bite Ali
‘A dog is what did not bite Ali (everything else did).’
The focused set is selected from a set determined by the discourse context,
which in the default case is the entire universe. So, (188) is uttered in the con-
text of there being some understood set of entities that may have the property of
having bitten Ali. Asserting that burus ‘dog’ is the only element of that set that
did not bite Ali entails that everything else in the candidate set did. This entail-
ment can only go through if the cleft construction includes the presupposition
that positive state of affairs denoted by the headless relative clause is true.