WH cleft

Question

Can someone please doule check my answer for the following questions
Write a sentence which satisfies each of the syntactic forms indicated:

(1) Maryam read her book out loud

WH cleft = Why do maryam read her book out loud?
IT cleft= It was loud how Mayam reads her book.

Avangi · Accepted Answer

Anonymous WH cleft = Why do maryam read her book out loud? Why did Maryam read her book out loud?
IT cleft= It was loud how Mayam reads her book.It was loud how Maryam read her book.

Hi,
I just changed the tenses to agree with the original. I'm not into clefts.

"Read" is a tricky word. If I write, "I read the book every day," you have absolutely no way to tell if I intend present tense or past tense. If I say it out loud, you have no problem, because present tense is pronounced "reed," and past tense is pronounced "red."

The only way I knew your original exercise was supposed to be past tense, is because present tense third person singular would have to be "Maryam reads her book out loud." So it can't be present tense. (You used the correct present tense form (reads) in your second example, but the main verb "was" is past tense.)

- A.

CalifJim · Answer

AnonymousMaryam read her book out loud.

What Maryam read out loud was her book.
What Maryam did was read her book out loud.
It was Maryam that read her book out loud.
It was her book that Maryam read out loud.
CJ

Avangi · Answer

Thanks, CJ.  What's a cleft?  Or should I say, "Why's a cleft?"

CalifJim · Answer

I think my best explanation of cleft sentences is at .
But you might want to read these as well

CJ

Avangi · Answer

Thanks, CJ. Wow! I had no idea all this was going on. My harmony professor always said, "The thing about it is this:" Strange that only the IT cleft should rise to the status of legitimacy. Perhaps it was the first to be named. But on the other hand, psuedo-ephedrine is better than ephedrine. (We need a word for "not a genuine psuedo.")

- A.

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