cleft sentence

English

Noun

cleft sentence (plural cleft sentences)

Examples
It's money that I love. It was from John that she heard the news. It was Goliath that David killed.

1. (linguistics) A complex sentence whose meaning could be expressed by a simple sentence, that has a dependent clause in front of the main clause, and that typically stresses a particular constituent.
   • 1978, Per-Kristian Halvorsen, The Syntax and Semantics of Cleft Constructions, Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, page 28,

     Quirk et al (1972) say about the cleft sentence that it is "...so called because it divides a single clause into two separate sections, each with its own verb".

   • 1984, Ann Borkin, Problems in Form and Function, Ablex Publishing Corporation, page 120:

     Following Bolinger (1972, 1977) and Gundel (1977), I assume that the introductory it of cleft sentences is referential […] .

   • 2007, Joachim Crass, Ronny Meyer, editors, Deictics, Copula and Focus in the Ethiopian Convergence Area, page 170:

     Similar analyses of cleft sentences have been repeated in the linguistic literature ever since.

Related terms

• pseudocleft

Translations

complex sentence stressing a particular constituent

• French: phrase clivée f
• German: Spaltsatz m
• Hebrew: משפט מבוקע m (mišpát mevuká), קלפט m (kleft)
• Irish: abairt scoilte f
• Italian: frase scissa f
• Japanese: 分裂文 (ぶんれつぶん, bunretsu-bun)
• Korean: 분열문 (bunyeolmun)