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Cleft sentence
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== Types == [[File:It-Cleft Sentence Tree.png|alt=Syntax tree for the it-cleft sentence: "It was John that Mary saw"|thumb|166x166px|It-Cleft sentence: "''It was John that Mary saw.''"]][[File:Wh-Cleft-Pseudo-Cleft Syntax Tree.png|alt=Syntax Tree for Wh-Cleft/Pseudo-Cleft sentence: "What Mary bought was a first edition"|thumb|195x195px|Wh-Cleft/Pseudo-Cleft sentence: "''What Mary bought was a first edition.''"]] [[File:Syntax Tree for Reversed wh-cleft-inverted pseudo-cleft.png|alt=Syntax Tree for Reversed Wh-Cleft/Inverted/Pseudo-cleft sentence: "Alice was who John was talking to."|thumb|207x207px|Reversed Wh-Cleft/Inverted/Pseudo-Cleft sentence: "''Alice was who John was talking to''."]]English is very rich in cleft constructions. Below are examples of some 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 === In English, it-clefts consist of the pronoun ''it'', followed by a form of the verb ''to be'', a cleft constituent, and a [[complementizer]], which introduces a relative clause that is attributed to the cleft phrase.<ref name="AutoDU-1">{{Cite journal |last1=Bevacqua |first1=Luca |last2=Scheffler |first2=Tatjana |date=2020-01-01 |title=Form variation of pronominal it-clefts in written English |journal=Linguistics Vanguard |language=en |volume=6 |issue=1 |doi=10.1515/lingvan-2019-0066 |s2cid=230284069 |issn=2199-174X|doi-access=free }} [[File:CC-BY icon.svg|50px]] Text was copied from this source, which is available under a [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License].</ref> It-clefts introduce two meanings parts: (1) a [[presupposition]] that the property in the clause following the complementiser holds of some entity; and (ii) an assertion that this property holds of the entity denoted by the cleft constituent.<ref name="AutoDU-1"/> * '''English it-cleft:''' ''It was John that Mary saw.''<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Reeve |first=Matthew |date=2011-01-01 |title=The syntactic structure of English clefts |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384110001476 |journal=Lingua |language=en |volume=121 |issue=2 |pages=142β171 |doi=10.1016/j.lingua.2010.05.004 |issn=0024-3841}}</ref> === Wh-cleft/Pseudo-cleft === In English, pseudo-clefts consist of an interrogative clause in the subject position, followed by a form of the verb ''be'', followed by the focused element that appears at the end of the sentence.<ref name="Sportiche">{{Cite book |first=Dominique |last=Sportiche |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/861536792 |title=An introduction to syntactic analysis and theory |isbn=978-1-118-47048-0 |oclc=861536792}}</ref> The prototypical pseudo-cleft construction uses ''what'', while other [[Interrogative word|wh-words]] like ''who'', ''where'' etc. and their [[pro-form]] equivalents like ''thing'', ''one'', ''place'' etc. are used less frequently.<ref name="Collins">{{cite book | last = Collins | first = Peter Craig | title = Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English | year = 2002 | orig-date = 1991 |edition = 1st | location = London | publisher = Routledge | page = 27{{ndash}}28 | isbn = 978-0203202463 | quote = Frequencies for the different relative clause types in the corpus are presented in Table 3.1, which shows that the prototypical pseudo-cleft with relative clause introduced by ''what'' is statistically dominant, and that the fused-type is almost three times as common as the lexically-headed type.}}</ref> Pseudo-clefts are tools for presenting and highlighting new information, serving as the building blocks of a coherent discourse progression, and a rhetorical toolkit to construct an authorial stance, being a grammatical resource for making evaluative meaning.{{vague|date=March 2023}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Zhou |first1=Hui |last2=Chen |first2=Ming |date=2021-05-28 |title=What Still Needs to be Noted: Pseudo-Clefts in the Academic Discourse of Applied Linguistics |journal=Frontiers in Psychology |volume=12 |pages=672349 |doi=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.672349 |issn=1664-1078 |pmc=8194822 |pmid=34122267|doi-access=free }}</ref> * '''English wh-cleft/pseudo-cleft:''' ''What Mary bought was a first edition.''<ref name="Sportiche" /> === Reversed wh-cleft/Inverted pseudo-cleft === In English, an inverted pseudo-cleft consists of the identical structure to pseudoclefting, however, the two strings around the verb ''be'' are inverted.<ref name="Sportiche"/> The focus element has been brought to the front of the sentence, and the clause is sentence final.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Akmajian |first=Adrian |date=1970 |title=On Deriving Cleft Sentences from Pseudo-Cleft Sentences |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4177550 |journal=Linguistic Inquiry |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=149β168 |jstor=4177550 |issn=0024-3892}}</ref> * '''English reversed wh-cleft/inverted pseudo-cleft:''' # ''A Fiat is what he wanted to buy.''<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Irgin |first1=Pelin |title=A Difficulty Analysis of Cleft Sentences |journal=International Online Journal of Education & Teaching |date=Oct 2013 |volume=1 |issue=1 |url=https://www.iojet.org/index.php/IOJET/article/view/10 |access-date=April 20, 2022}}</ref> # ''Alice was who John was talking to.''<ref name="Sportiche" /> === All-cleft === In English, all-cleft sentences are related to pseudo-clefts in which they are constructed with the subject of the sentence embedded in the phrase and expressed with the verb "to be".<ref name="BONELLI 30β42">{{Cite journal |last=BONELLI |first=ELENA TOGNINI |date=1992-01-01 |title='All I'm Saying Isβ¦': The Correlation of Form and Function in Pseudo-cleft Sentences |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/7.1.30 |journal=Literary and Linguistic Computing |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=30β42 |doi=10.1093/llc/7.1.30 |issn=0268-1145}}</ref> Where pseudo-clefts begin with a wh-phrase (''what'', ''where'', ''who''), all-clefts begin with the use of the word "all".<ref name="BONELLI 30β42"/>[[File:Syntax Tree for All-Cleft.png|thumb|214x214px|All Cleft sentence: "''All they want is a holiday."'']] * '''English ''all''-cleft:''' # ''All he wanted to buy was a Fiat.''<ref name="iojet.org">{{cite journal |last1=Pelin |first1=Irgin |title=A Difficulty Analysis of Cleft Sentences |journal=International Online Journal of Education & Teaching |date=Oct 2013 |volume=1 |issue=1 |url=https://www.iojet.org/index.php/IOJET/article/view/10 |access-date=April 20, 2022}}</ref> # ''All they want is a holiday.''<ref name="BONELLI 30β42"/> === Inferential cleft === In English, inferential clefts involve a subordinate clause that is embedded as a complement of the verb "to be", and the sentence begins with the subject "it".<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Delahunty |first=Gerald P. |date=1995 |title=The Inferential Reconstruction |url=http://journals.linguisticsociety.org/elanguage/pragmatics/article/download/409/409-703-1-PB.pdf |journal=Pragmatics |volume=5 |issue=3 |pages=341β364 |doi=10.1075/prag.5.3.03del |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200321000342/http://journals.linguisticsociety.org/elanguage/pragmatics/article/download/409/409-703-1-PB.pdf |archive-date=21 March 2020 |url-status=dead |access-date=13 April 2022 }}</ref> Oftentimes, an inferential cleft will include an adverb such as ''only, simply'' or ''just.''<ref name=":0" /> While they are analyzed in written text, data on inferential clefts are often found in spoken language and act as a subordinate clause of the subject they are inferring.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Calude |first1=Andreea S. |last2=Delahunty |first2=Gerald P. |date=2011-09-01 |title=Inferentials in spoken English |journal=Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association |language=en |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=307β340 |doi=10.1075/prag.21.3.02cal |issn=1018-2101|doi-access=free |hdl=10289/8007 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> * '''English inferential cleft:'''[[File:Syntax tree for Inferential Cleft (ex. 2).png|thumb|197x197px|Inferential Cleft sentence: "''It was just that it was raining.''"]] # ''It is not that he loves her. It's just that he has a way with her that is different.''<ref name="iojet.org"/> # ''It was just that it was raining.''<ref name=":0" /> === There-cleft === Looking at existential sentences, in all languages, they are understood to belong to a grammatically distinct construction, which is utilized to express existential positions. Cleft-sentences in English contain existential sentences that have a ''dummy there'' as a subject, ''be'' as a main verb, and an NP in the post-verbal complement position. To elaborate, ''dummy there'' can be distinguished as an adverbial, pronoun, and subject. Likewise, ''be'' can be distinguished as a main verb, and may contain other intransitive verbs such as ''come'', ''remain'', ''exist'', ''arise'', and ''stand''. Lastly, ''post-verbal NP'' depends on the discourse of the entity or entities that refer to the novel information it is expressing.<ref name="Cleft existential in English">{{cite journal |last1=Collins |first1=Peter |title=Cleft existential in English |journal=Language Sciences |date=October 1992 |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=419β433 |doi=10.1016/0388-0001(92)90024-9 |url=https://doi.org/10.1016/0388-0001(92)90024-9 |access-date=April 16, 2022}}</ref> [[File:Syntax Tree for There-Cleft.png|thumb|There-Cleft sentence: "''And then there's a new house he wanted to build''."|240x240px]] * '''English dummy ''there''-cleft:''' # ''There's nobody there.''<ref name="Cleft existential in English"/> # ''There seemed to be nothing he couldn't do.''<ref name="Cleft existential in English"/> * '''English ''be there''-cleft:''' ''There comes a stage when a player should move on.''<ref name="Cleft existential in English"/> * '''English post-verbal NP ''there''-cleft:''' ''There was George Talbot and there was Ted.''<ref name="Cleft existential in English"/> * '''English ''there''-cleft:''' ''And then there's a new house he wanted to build.''<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Irgin |first1=Pelin |title=A difficulty Analysis of Cleft Sentences |journal=International Online Journal of Education & Teaching |date=October 2013 |volume=1 |issue=1 |url = https://doaj.org/article/0902b7bd0c714524b8af95af72bc01cb | access-date=April 17, 2022}}</ref> [[File:Syntax Tree for If-Because Cleft Sentence.png|thumb|248x248px|If-Because Cleft sentence: "''If he wants to be an actor it's because he wants to be famous."'']] === If-because cleft === {{Expand section|date=November 2024}} * '''English ''if-because'' cleft:''' ''If he wants to be an actor it's because he wants to be famous.''<ref name="iojet.org" /> === Other languages === 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 (linguistics)|quantifier]] ''all'', and so on). This makes it difficult to conduct cross-linguistic investigations of clefts since these elements do not exist in all 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, [[Focus (linguistics)|focusing particles]] and so on (see Miller 1996). ''Cleftability in Language'' (2009) by Cheng Luo presents a cross-linguistic discussion of cleftability.
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