A cleft sentence is a complex sentence (one having a main clause and a dependent clause) that has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Clefts typically put a particular constituent into focus. This focusing is often accompanied by a special intonation.
In English, a cleft sentence can be constructed as follows:
- it + conjugated form of to be + X + subordinate clause
where it is a cleft pronoun and X is usually a noun phrase (although it can also be a prepositional phrase, and in some cases an adjectival or adverbial phrase). The focus is on X, or else on the subordinate clause or some element of it. For example:
- It's Joey (whom) we're looking for.
- It's money that I love.
- It was from John that she heard the news.
- It was meeting Jim that really started me off on this new line of work.
Read more about Cleft Sentence: Types, Structural Issues, Information Structure
Famous quotes containing the words cleft and/or sentence:
“Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!
Let the Water and the Blood,
From thy riven Side which flow’d,
Be of sin the double cure;
Cleanse me from its guilt and pow’r.”
—Augustus Montague Toplady (1740–1778)
“It is difficult to believe that even idiots ever succumbed to such transparent contradictions, to such gaudy processions of mere counter-words, to so vast and obvious a nonsensicality ... sentence after sentence that has no apparent meaning at all—stuff quite as bad as the worst bosh of Warren Gamaliel Harding.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)