it was you i saw

[Peter Jiong]

“I thought it was you I saw coming up the hill,” she said, stretching out her hand.

From Mrs. Craddock by W Somerset Maugham (1902)

What does the underlined sentence mean?

 

[GoesStation]

I thought the person I saw who was walking up the hill was you.

 

[emsr2d2]

Does it help you to read it as "I thought it was you that I saw coming up the hill"?

 

[Phaedrus]

“I thought it was you I saw coming up the hill,” she said, stretching out her hand.

From Mrs. Craddock by W Somerset Maugham (1902)

What does the underlined sentence mean?

The "that"-clause complement of "think" ("[that] it was you I saw coming up the hill") contains a cleft sentence: "it was you I saw coming up the hill."

The cleft sentence "It was you [that] I saw coming up the hill" derives from the sentence "I saw you coming up the hill."

However, because the cleft sentence presupposes that the speaker saw someone coming up the hill, its meaning is equivalent to an identification:

It was you I saw coming up the hill. = The person I saw coming up the hill was you./You were the one I saw coming up the hill.