When even the passive voice isn’t enough

[Joe Carillo]

There are times when we just feel that even the passive voice falls short of giving us the desired emphasis for what we want to say. That’s when we take recourse to a peculiar grammar device that we learn at a very early age probably without even realizing it. That device is the cleft sentence, so-called because it “cleaves” or splits a single-clause sentence into two clauses for semantic emphasis or style. It is the written equivalent of making our voice louder to draw attention to the most important points of what we are saying.

Cleft sentences take two common forms. The first is the “it”-cleft, which exhibits the pattern “It + be + [subject of focus] + [action or defining clause],” as in “It was the accusers themselves who fudged the data.” The other is the pseudo-cleft or “wh-”cleft, which normally takes the form “Wh- + [subject] + [verb] + [form of be] + [rest of the predicate],” as in “What she did was a wonderful thing.” Both forms depart from the usual declarative sentence form to achieve a stronger, defensive emphasis. (The straightforward form of the “it” cleft is, of course, “The accusers themselves fudged the data”; that of the “wh-” cleft, “She did a wonderful thing.”)   

The “it” cleft. In this type of sentence construction, the often-derided and supposedly empty function word “it” works to highlight an object of special focus, or theme. In the process, the sentence assumes the tone and form of a statement seeking to correct someone’s wrong idea. The negator “no” or “not,” if unstated, can normally be presumed to precede it. For instance, someone may have just said this pointedly: “The accused, Your Honor, fudged the data.” The defensive—perhaps outraged—reply would likely be an “it”-cleft: “No, Your Honor, it was the accusers themselves who fudged the data.”

An “it”-cleft sentence always has a dependent clause introduced by the subordinators “that” or “who” or by none at all, and that dependent clause normally ends the sentence for emphasis: “It was her that I wanted all along.” “It is Alberto who can make things possible for us.” “No, my dear, it is our son sleeping on the sofa.” By some peculiar language alchemy, the “it”-cleft achieves a double emphasis—one for the cleft’s theme, and the other for the chosen end-focus. In the examples above, it is the following idea-pairs that get emphasis: “her”/“I wanted all along”; “Alberto”/“can make things possible for us”; and “our son”/“sleeping on the sofa.”    

Like the plain passive-voice construction, the “it”-cleft gives wide latitude in emphasizing any of the following grammar elements in the scheme of things: ihe actor or doer of the action, the indirect or direct object, or the act itself. Take this simple declarative statement: “The judge gave the erring lawyer a sharp rebuke.” Now look at just three of the “it”-cleft forms that sentence could take: “It was the judge that gave the erring lawyer a sharp rebuke.” “It was the erring lawyer that the judge sharply rebuked.” “It was a sharp rebuke that the erring lawyer got from the judge.” All revolve around the same idea, but with different shades of meaning.

The pseudo-cleft or “wh-”cleft. This construction takes both the main verb and theme (main idea) of the sentence, fashions them into a noun clause, and uses that noun clause to begin the sentence. Instead of  “it,” however, the pseudo-cleft uses “what” to introduce that clause.

By alchemy similar to the “it”-cleft’s, the pseudo-cleft allows us to create several variations of a statement to emphasize a different theme each time. See what the pseudo-cleft can do to a simple declarative like, say, “We brought Eve some luscious fruits.”

Emphasizing the direct object (“luscious fruits”) from the doer’s (“we”) standpoint: “What we brought to Eve were luscious fruits.”

Emphasizing the direct object from the doer’s standpoint, but less assertively: “What were brought by us to Eve were luscious fruits.”
 
Emphasizing the action: “What we did was to bring luscious fruits to Eve.”

Emphasizing all the elements: “What happened was that we brought luscious fruits to Eve.”

Note that a “wh-”cleft theme is always a subordinate clause introduced by “what,” and is always the subject of a passive-voice sentence.

Clefts are potent, high-energy devices for achieving greater emphasis, but we must use them with restraint—certainly not as habitual forms of expressing ourselves. To overuse them is to trivialize not only the very things we want to emphasize but the rest of our composition as well.

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 67 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
When even the passive voice isn’t enough

Next week: Crafting our sentences to their context     (January 16, 2025)

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.