Introducing English Linguistics

part of art and dance is to do with the recovery of the whole person
uhm to do with making people whole that that’s the role of art and
dance And uhm I think what’s been 
happening for for a quite a period
The structure of English texts
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of
time is that therapy has been uhm put on one side dance on
another
(ICE-GB S1A-004 91–94)
A similar effect can be achieved in a cleft sentence. A cleft sentence has
the structure of it
be[ ]relative pronoun (e.g. who or which) with some
item stressed and emphasized following be:
Declarative Sentence: My brother called me yesterday.
Cleft: It was my BRÒther who called me yesterday.
Instead of using a cleft sentence in the second example below, Speaker A
could have answered her own question by saying You told me that, didn’t you
with falling pitch rather than rising pitch on didn’t you to indicate that A
came to the realization that B had indeed brought certain information to
her attention.
B: I thought they were playing the borderline
A: Yeah was it you who told me that? It WÀS you that told me that 
wasn’t it
(ICE-GB S1A-099 271–2)
But by using a cleft sentence instead, with stress on was, this realization is
highlighted more explicitly. In the cleft structure below, the speaker could
highlight the first syllable of either study or architecture:
B: On what did you I mean did you decide at that stage to continue in
architecture
A: No not really I kind of I mean I I started the course thinking that
uhm I’d sort of do the full seven years and stuff but like I’m just
going through the course I just just realised that it was actually the