Why is this called cleft?

[alpacinou]

Hello everyone,

This is a cleft sentence right?

What I need right now is an ice cream.

My question is, why do they call it cleft? What has been separated or split here? Clef means to divide or separate two things, doesn't it?

This is the original sentence: I need an ice cream. Cleft sentence: What I need is an ice cream.

I wonder why they are called cleft sentences.

 

[GoesStation]

[STRIKE]Clef[/STRIKE] Cleave means to divide or separate two things, doesn't it?

"Cleft" is a past participle and adjective form of the rarely-used but interesting verb cleave. Not only does "cleave" have another adjective form, cloven (seen only in the fixed phrase cloven hoof); it's also a member of the exclusive fraternity of contranyms.

 

[alpacinou]

"Cleft" is a past participle and adjective form of the rarely-used but interesting verb cleave. Not only does "cleave" have another adjective form, cloven (seen only in the fixed phrase cloven hoof); it's also a member of the exclusive fraternity of contranyms.

Yes. But why are those sentences are called cleft sentences?

 

[Tarheel]

In a cleft sentence, a sentence one element is put in a separate clause. It is 'cleft' from the original S-V-O pattern.

A sentence one element?

 

[Tarheel]

I guess I'm going to have to work on learning cleft sentences now.
:-|

 

[PaulMatthews]

Hello everyone,

This is a cleft sentence right? What I need right now is an ice cream.

My question is, why do they call it cleft? What has been separated or split here? Clef means to divide or separate two things, doesn't it?

This is the original sentence: I need an ice cream. Cleft sentence: What I need is an ice cream.

I wonder why they are called cleft sentences.

The idea is that a cleft sentence is formed by dividing a more elementary clause into two parts, so "I need an ice-cream" becomes "It's an ice-cream that I need" with a main clause at the front containing the meaningless dummy pronoun "it" as subject, and the rest in a 'conventional' relative clause.

But your example is actually a pseudo-cleft, as opposed to an it-cleft.

Again, the basic construction is split into two parts, but this time the foregrounded element is placed in a 'fused' relative construction, where "what" is understood as "that which" (or "the thing which"). The three constructions are thus:

I need an ice-cream. [non-cleft]
It's an ice-cream that I need. [it-cleft]
What I need is an ice-cream. [pseudo-cleft]