What is a cleft sentence?

Definition A cleft sentence is a complex sentence in which a simple sentence is expressed using a main clause and a subordinate clause. In English the prototypical cleft sentence has the following form: it + be + X + subordinate clause X can be a constituent of one of many varieties. Discussion X and the subordinate clause together carry the same meaning as their corresponding simple sentence. However, the primary focus of the cleft construction is on an element, often marked by intonation, that introduces new information. This element appears either as X or in the subordinate clause. Example (English) No, it is his callousness that I shall ignore. Its corresponding simple sentence is No, I shall ignore his callousness. The primary focus of the cleft sentence may be marked by intonation, as in following sentences:

No, it is his callousness that I shall ignore. No, it is his callousness that I shall ignore.

A cleft sentence is a complex sentence (i.e. having a main clause and a dependent clause) which 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 is Joey for whom we are looking. 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. 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 which are 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. [edit] Structural issues The role of the cleft pronoun (it in the case of English) is controversial, and some believe it to be referential[1], while others treat it as a dummy pronoun or empty element[2]. The former analysis has come to be termed the "expletive" view, whereas

the latter is referred to as the "extraposition" approach. Hedberg (2002) proposes a hybrid approach, combining ideas from both takes on the status of the cleft pronoun. She shows that it can have a range of scopes (from semantically void to full reference) depending on the context in which it is used. Similarly controversial is the status of the subordinate clause, often termed the "cleft clause". While most would agree that the cleft clause in wh-clefts can be analysed as some kind of relative clause (free or fused or headless), there is disagreement as to the exact nature of the relative. Traditionally, the wh-word in a cleft like What you need is a good holiday, pertaining to the relative What you need is understood to be the first constituent of the relative clause, and function as its head. Bresnan and Grimshaw (1987) posit a different analysis. They suggest that the relative clause is headed (rather than headless), with wh-word being located outside the clause proper and functioning as its head. Miller (1996) also endorses this approach, citing cross-linguistic evidence that the wh-word function as indefinite deictics. The cleft clause debate gets more complex with it-clefts, where researchers struggle to even agree as to the type of clause that is involved: the traditionalists claim it to be a relative clause (Huddleston and Pullum 2002), while others reject this on the basis of a lack of noun phrase antecedent(Quirk et al. 1985, Sornicola 1988, Miller 1999), as exemplified below: It was because he was ill (that) we decided to return. It was in September that he first found out about it. It was with great reluctance that Maria accepted the invitation. Finally, the last element of a cleft is the cleft constituent. As mentioned earlier, the focused part of a cleft is typically a noun phrase, but may in fact, turn up to be just about anything[3]: Prepositional phrase: It was by foot that he went there. Adverbial Phrase: It was greedily and speedily that Homer Simpson drank his beer. Non-finite clause; It is to address a far-reaching problem that Oxfam is setting out to do. Gerund; It could be going home early or slacking off work that the boss reacted to. Adverbial clause: It was because she was so lonely all the time that drove her to move out. [edit] Information structure Clefts have been described as "equative" (Halliday 1976), "stative" (Delin and Oberlander 1995) and as "variable-value pairs", where the cleft constituent gives a variable which is expressed by the cleft clause (Herriman 2004, Declerck 1994, Halliday 1994). A major area of interest with regard to cleft constructions involves their information structure. The concept of "information structure" relates to the type of information encoded in a particular utterance, which can be: NEW information: things which the speaker/writer expects their hearer/reader might not already know, GIVEN information: information which the speaker/writer expects the hearer/reader may be familiar with, or INFERRABLE information: information which the speaker/writer may expect the hearer/reader to be able to infer either from world knowledge, or from previous discourse. The reason why information structure plays such an important role in the area of clefts is largely due to the fact that the organisation of information structure is tighly linked to the clefts' function as focusing tools used by speakers/writers to draw attention to salient parts of their message. While it may be reasonable to assume that the variable of a cleft (that is, the material encoded by cleft clauses) may be typically GIVEN and its value (expressed by the cleft constituent) is NEW, it is not always so. Sometimes, neither element contains new information, as is in some demonstrative clefts, e.g., That is what I think and sometimes it is the cleft clause which contains the NEW part of the message, as in And that's when I got sick (Calude 2009). Finally, in some constructions, it is the equation between cleft clause and cleft constituent which brings about the newsworthy information, rather than any of the elements of the cleft themselves (Lambrecht 2001).