Clefting
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A cleft sentence is a sentence formed by a main clause and a subordinate clause, which together express a meaning that could be shown using a simple sentence, but focusing on a particular constituent. 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 X is usually a noun phrase. The focus is on X, or else on the subordinate clause or some element of it. For example:
- It is Joey that we're looking for.
- It was money James wanted.
- It was from John that she heard the news.
- It was meeting Jim that really started me off on this new line of work.Template:Ling-stub