A cleft sentence is a complex sentence (one having a main clause and a dependent clause) that has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Clefts typically put a particular constituent into focus. In spoken language, 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 it is a cleft pronoun and X is usually a noun phrase (although it can also be a prepositional phrase, and in some cases an adjectival or adverbial phrase). The focus is on X, or else on the subordinate clause or some element of it. For example: It's Joey (whom) we're looking for. It's money that I love. It was from John that she heard the news. Furthermore, one might also describe a cleft sentence as inverted. That is to say, it has its dependent clause in front of the main clause. So, rather than: Example: We didn't meet her until we arrived at the hotel. the cleft would be: It wasn't until we arrived at the hotel that (or when) we met her. Types English is very rich in cleft constructions. Below are examples of some types of clefts found in English, though the list is not exhaustive. See Lambrecht 2001 for a comprehensive survey, Collins 1991 for an in-depth analysis of it-clefts and wh-clefts in English, and Calude 2009 for an investigation of clefts in spoken English. It-cleft In English, it-clefts consist of the pronoun it, followed by a form of the verb to be, a cleft constituent, and a complementizer, which introduces a relative clause that is attributed to the cleft phrase. It-clefts introduce two meanings parts: (1) a presupposition that the property in the clause following the complementiser holds of some entity; and (ii) an assertion that this property holds of the entity denoted by the cleft constituent. English it-cleft: It was John that Mary saw. Wh-cleft/Pseudo-cleft In English, pseudo-clefts consist of an interrogative clause in subject position, and a focused element appears at the end of the sentence – this is followed by a form of the verb be. For many speakers, pseudo-cleft construction is only possible with what (as opposed to who, where...). Pseudo-clefts are tools for presenting and highlighting new information, serving as the building blocks of a coherent discourse progression, and