Abstract
This study examines cleft constructions in Dolomitic Ladin, drawing on a corpus of Gospel translations across different Ladin varieties and comparing them with major contact languages (Italian and German) as well as other Rhaeto-Romance varieties (Romansh and Friulian).
The research has two primary objectives. First, it wants to provide an initial systematic taxonomy of clefting in Dolomitic Ladin, based on written and genre-specific data. Second, it aims to demonstrate that focus marking in this specific corpus of Gospel translations cannot be adequately analyzed without considering its pragmatic function.
Regarding the first objective, the analysis reveals a high degree of structural complexity and heterogeneity, influenced by different aspects, such as syntactic-typological characteristics, internal idiomatic variation, and language contact with contact varieties.
As for the second objective, the findings confirm that cleft constructions, and especially cleft sentences, serve not only a structural but also a crucial pragmatic function in focus marking. The Gospel translations used as a corpus provided essential insights into how discourse context influences plays a significant role in triggering clefting.