<i>Everything</i>-cleft constructions in spoken British English

Abstract Within the framework of Construction Grammar, this study examines constructions with a cleft form containing everything , e.g., that’s everything that’s happened , in spoken British English, using the London-Lund Corpora and the British National Corpora. We trace the development of everything -clefts in recent history and make comparisons with all -clefts since both all and everything express totality . Our aim is to determine the form-meaning properties of everything -clefts, to examine whether everything -clefts too express the smallness and exhaustiveness readings associated with all -clefts, and whether everything -clefts are also dialogically contractive. The frequency per million words of everything -clefts, however, is 3.3, which is lower than for all -clefts. Also, based on the distinction between regular predicational, reverse predicational and reverse specificational everything -clefts, we find that most everything -clefts are predicational and express quality and that only a small number of reverse specificational everything -clefts express exhaustiveness and are dialogically contractive. Moreover, an even smaller number of everything -clefts also express smallness . We argue that exhaustiveness in everything -clefts stems from a metonymic link to the boundary involved in the totality meaning of everything in analogy with reverse all -clefts. The reverse exhaustive specificational everything -clefts are similar to all -clefts and clearly deserve a place in the constructional network of English specificational cleft constructions.