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A Concise Guide to English Grammar

Phillip Haisley

Section 16.3 Special Constructions

Why would anyone say It was John who ate the cake instead of just John ate the cake? Both sentences report the same event, but they do not mean the same thing in context. The cleft version singles out John—it implies that the identity of the eater was in question and is now being answered. English provides several special constructions that work this way: they rearrange the material of a basic sentence to spotlight particular information, to introduce entities smoothly into discourse, or to shift heavy material away from the front of a sentence where it creates processing difficulty.
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English has several special sentence constructions that manipulate information structure.
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Cleft Sentences.

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Cleft sentences split a simple sentence to highlight specific information.
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It-clefts (focus on one element):
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  • Base: John ate the cake.
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  • Cleft: It was John who ate the cake. (focus on John)
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  • Cleft: It was the cake that John ate. (focus on cake)
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Wh-clefts (pseudo-clefts):
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Clefts emphasize the focused element and presuppose the rest.
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Existential Sentences.

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Existential sentences introduce new referents into discourse, typically beginning with there:
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  • There is a book on the table.
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  • There are three students waiting.
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  • There seems to be a problem.
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The there is expletive (meaningless placeholder), not the locative adverb there.
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Extraposition.

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Extraposition moves a heavy subject clause to the end, using it as placeholder:
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  • Original: That she resigned surprised everyone.
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  • Extraposed: It surprised everyone that she resigned.
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  • Original: To explain everything would take too long.
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  • Extraposed: It would take too long to explain everything.
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Extraposition improves processing by avoiding long subjects.
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Topicalization.

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Topicalization moves an element to sentence-initial position for emphasis:
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  • Base: I never liked that movie.
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  • Topicalized: That movie, I never liked.
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  • Base: She’s talented, not lucky.
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  • Topicalized: Talented she is, not lucky.
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