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Tenjing Posted 12 years ago
Grammar

Is this a correct sentence?

Who/Whom I have been trying to get for years is you.
  

Top answer

No

— Fivejedjon

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16 Answers
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This sentence doesn't work with either choice. If you want to write the sentence in this cleft form, you could say "The one I have been trying to get for years is you."
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GPYThis sentence doesn't work with either choice. If you want to write the sentence in this cleft form, you could say "The one I have been trying to get for years is you."
Cleft, and awkward. Try: You are the one I've been trying to get for years.
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Philip GPYThis sentence doesn't work with either choice. If you want to write the sentence in this cleft form, you could say "The one I have been trying to get for years is you."Cleft, and awkward. Try: You are the one I've been trying to get for years.
I don't necessarily agree that it is always awkward. Of course, there needs to be some contextual reason for
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GPYIf you want to write the sentence in this cleft form, you could say "The one I have been trying to get for years is you."
That’s a cleft?
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tenjing Who/Whom I have been trying to get for years is you.
No, you can't do that. You are trying to build a sentence by analogy with something like this:

1 What I've been trying to fix is this faucet.

Thus:

2 *Who I've been trying to meet is the president.

It's logi
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Aspara Gus GPYIf you want to write the sentence in this cleft form, you could say "The one I have been trying to get for years is you."That’s a cleft?
Oh ... isn't it?

Maybe it should just be called inverted?
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GPYisn't it?
No. To be a cleft sentence it has to start with "It is" and have the form "It is ... [that / who] ...". The following is a cleft sentence.

It is you that I have been trying to get for years.

To be frank, I don't think I see anything inverted about The one I have been ... either — not any more than the following is
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GPYOh ... isn't it?
The only clefts I know are the it-cleft and the pseudo-cleft, which contains a fused relative.
GPYMaybe it should just be called inverted?
I don’t think so. Inversion doesn’t involve changing the functions. The subject and complement are different in The one I have been trying to get for years i
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CalifJimNo. To be a cleft sentence it has to start with "It is" and have the form "It is ... [that / who] ...".
The Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleft_sentence lists various other forms.

See also
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