This article deals with the diachronic change of pseudo-clefts in which the clefted constituent, i.e. focused part, is realized as a verb, i.e. to-infinitive, bare-infinitive, -ing. (e.g. What/All he did was help/to help her. What/All he was doing was helping her.) The analysis of the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA, 1820-2009) shows that to-infinitive is the oldest construction but was not frequently used until the early 1800s from which its use rapidly increased until the early 1900s. It was then overtaken by its competitor, the bare-infinitive, in the 1950s-1970s and fell into decline. The bare-infinitive is the early 20th century innovation rarely used before then and shows a rapid rise throughout the 1900s. The occurrence of -ing is found from the early 1900s and gradually increases until now. The replacement of to-infinitive by bare-infinitive was lead by all-clefts rather than what-clefts: All-clefts are not only higher in the overall frequency but earlier in the innovative use of bare-infinitive.

1. 서론
 2. 선행연구
 3. 코퍼스 자료 분석
  3.1. what-절
  3.2. all-절
 4. 후기현대영어 이전의 유사분열문의 사용
 5. 결론
 참고문헌

• 김혜리(대구가톨릭대학교)