Types
English is very rich in cleft constructions. Below are examples of other types of clefts found in English, though the list is not exhaustive (see Lambrecht 2001 for a comprehensive survey, Collins 1991 for an in-depth analysis of it-clefts and wh-clefts in English, and Calude 2009 for an investigation of clefts in spoken English).
- It-cleft: It is Jaime for whom we are looking.
- Wh-cleft: What he wanted to buy was a Fiat.
- Reversed wh-cleft/Pseudo-cleft: A Fiat is what he wanted to buy.
- All-cleft: All he wanted to buy was a Fiat.
- Inferential cleft It is not that he loves her. It's just that he has a way with her that is different.
- There-cleft: And then there's a new house he wanted to build.
- If-because cleft: If he wants to be an actor it's because he wants to be famous.
Unfortunately, traditional accounts of cleft structures classify these according to the elements involved following English-centric analyses (such as wh-words, the pronoun it, the quantifier all, and so on). This makes it difficult to conduct cross-linguistic investigations of clefts since these elements do not exist in other languages, which has led to a proposal for a revision of existing cleft taxonomy (see Calude 2009).
However, not all languages are so rich in cleft types as English, and some employ other means for focusing specific constituents, such as topicalization, word order changes, focusing particles and so on (see Miller 1996). Cleftability in Language (2009) by Cheng Luo presents a cross-linguistic discussion of cleftability.
Read more about this topic: Cleft Sentence
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“He types his laboured column—weary drudge!
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—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)