It is when + that

Question

Ex. It is when he is talking about his immediate and extended family that he comes closest to taking responsibility for “doing” rather than letting things happen.

Q. I would like to understand the grammatical construction of the sentence. The that clause is tied to "it is"? Much like "It is so obvious that he didn't put time into it"?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Let me replace the 'when' clause with a simpler phrase that fits the same grammar structure:

It is every Sunday that he comes closest to taking responsibility for “doing” rather than letting things happen.

Does that help?

BillJ · Answer

Your two examples are quite different constructions falling within the information-packaging domain. The first is an 'it-cleft' construction, the second an 'extraposed' construction. Let's take the it-cleft first:

[1a] It is when he is talking about his immediate and extended family [that he comes closest to taking responsibility for “doing” rather than letting things happen].

[1b] He comes closest to taking responsibility for “doing” rather than letting things happen when he is talking about his immediate and extended family.

[1a], your example, is a cleft construction; specifically, it's the it-cleft counterpart of the more basic non-cleft construction in [1b], in which the underlined "when" clause is an adjunct (adverbial) of time. To form an it-cleft, the basic version is divided into two parts, hence the 'cleft' component of the name; one part is foregrounded and the other backgrounded. In your it-cleft example [1a], the underlined when clause has been foregrounded and the remaining part, the that clause, backgrounded. Now for the bit you're interested in: the foregrounded element (the when clause), functions as the predicative complement of "be", and the subject is the meaningless dummy pronoun "it". The bracketed backgrounded element (the that-clause) is not, as you thought, tied to "it is", but is a relative clause introduced by the relative word "that", which has the foregrounded part as antecedent. The effect of backgrounding is to mark the backgrounded information as presupposed, thus giving prominence to the foregrounded element. In your example, the fact 'that he comes closest to taking responsibility ...' is presupposed, so the reader's attention is directed to when it is that he does, i.e. the foregrounded element.

Now the simpler extraposed construction:

[2a] It is so obvious that he didn't put time into it.
[2b] That he didn't put time into it is so obvious.

[2a], your example, is the extraposed counterpart of the basic non-extraposed version [2b]. In the non-extraposed version, the subject is the underlined that-clause. In the extraposed version, the that-clause is shunted to the end of the sentence, and the dummy pronoun "it" replaces it as subject. The extraposed version [2a] is regarded as the default one. It's much more common because subordinate clauses tend to be heavier (longer and structurally more complex) that noun phrases, and there is in general a preference for placing heavy material at the end of the sentence, where it's easier to process. But note that in extraposition, "it" is a dummy element, serving the grammatical purpose of filling the subject position; the extraposed element doesn't give the meaning of "it", it's not tied to it, but is simply a semantic argument of the verb phrase.

BillJ

Vcolts · Answer

Thanks both of you, especially BillJ who wrote such a long detailed answer, which I will save as a file just in case I forget.
Have a good day!

It is when + that

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