[英语] It_be_XXX_that_YYY强调句句式

摘要&简述

本文介绍 一种常用的 强调句句型:

It be … that/who …
第一个省略号表示被强调的部分.
另外, that/who不能省略.

表示强调的that

I met Nancy in the park yesterday.  
我昨天在公园遇到了南茜.  

这个句子是由 "主语 + 谓语 + 宾语 + (修饰语, 这里为状语)"构成的第三类句型(即 S + V + O).

如果想强调这个句子中的特定部分, 该怎么办呢?

1. 我昨天在公园遇到的是(不是别人, 正是)南茜. [强调宾语]

2. 我昨天遇到南茜是在(不是其他地方, 正是)公园. [强调修饰语(此处是状语)]

3. 我遇到南茜是在(不是其他日子, 正是)昨天. [强调修饰语(此处是状语)]

4. 昨天在公园遇到南茜的人(不是别人, 正是)我. [强调主语]

这种情况就要用到表示强调的that, 基本句型是It be ... that, 把要强调的内容放在It be 和 that 之间.

1. It was Nancy that I met in the park yesterday.

2. It was in the park that I met Nancy yesterday.

3. It was yesterday that I met Nancy in the park.

4. It was I that met Nancy in the park yesterday.

注意, be动词要根据时态变化.

如果遇到that引导的从句, 发现翻译成名词性从句或定语从句都不通顺, 这时就要想到that表示强调的用法.

It be … that … 只起强调的作用, 所以去掉It be … that …之后依然是完整的句子.

下面来看几个例句:

1. I bought the book on Monday.
   = It was on Monday that I bought the book.
   (强调星期一) 我买那本书正是星期一.

2. It was an accident that changed my mind.
   (强调事故) 我改变注意正是因为一场事故.

3. It is I that am responsible for it.
   (强调我) 那正是我的责任.

It be … that/who …强调句句式中, that/who能不能省略?

不能省略.
但在 百度百科: 英语分裂句 中提到 当被强调的成分为宾语或状语时, 口语中通常省去引导分句的that.

英语分裂句（the cleft sentence）是以it为引导词的常用强调句型，其结构形式是：it+系动词be的一定形式+中心成分+that-/who-分句。
它是由普通陈述句转换而来的,通过这种结构可以强调除谓语动词以外的大多数句子成分，如主语、宾语、状语等，使其成为信息的中心。
当被强调的成分为宾语或状语时，口语中通常省去引导分句的that。例如：

It is Jim who is going to do it.
It is Lilei’s brother that you met in the street yesterday.
It is I who am to blame.

但在非正式语体中，分裂句中心成分I可用宾格代词me，这时，随后的 that一分句动词通常用第三人称单数。例如：
It is me that is to blame.
It is me that was injured in the accident.

如何区分It开头的强调句和名词性从句?

使用形式主语it开头的名词性从句, 和以it开头的强调句该怎么区分呢?

名词性从句中的形式主语it和含有that的强调句中的it是有区别的.

先来看例句.

(a) It is you that are to blame.

(b) It is true that we were a little late.

会发现, (a)句去掉表示强调的It be … that …后句子也是成立的.

It is you that are to blame. --> You are to blame. (句子成立)

但是如果是名词性从句中的形式主语It be … that … 去掉之后句子就不成立了.
(b)句就是如此:
It is true that we were a little late. --> True we were a little late. (句子不成立)

因此判断依据就是

使用形式主语It开头的名词性从句 和 以It开头的强调句, 
他们的样子都是 It be ... that ... 

区分他们俩的方式是
如果去掉It be that三个词后, 依然是完整的句子, 
那么就是强调句, 否则就是名词性从句

拓展延伸

在英文的语法中, It be … that/who …这种样子的强调句, 有个术语叫 A cleft sentence(分裂句).

Understanding the Meaning of a Cleft Sentence

In English grammar, a cleft is a construction in which some element in a sentence is moved from its normal position into a separate clause to give it greater emphasis. A cleft is also known as a cleft sentence, a cleft construction, and a cleft clause.

“A cleft sentence is a sentence that is cleft (split) so as to put the focus on one part of it. The cleft sentence is introduced by it, which is followed by a verb phrase whose main verb is generally be. The focused part comes next, and then the rest of the sentence is introduced by a relative pronoun, relative determiner, or relative adverb. If we take the sentence Tom felt a sharp pain after lunch, two possible cleft sentences formed from it are It was Tom who felt a sharp pain after lunch and It was after lunch that Tom felt a sharp pain.”

Take, for example, the simple declarative sentence, “Jerry went to the movie yesterday.” If you would want to emphasize one element or another, the sentence could be rewritten in several different ways:

• It was Jerry who went to the movie yesterday.

• It was to the movie that Jerry went yesterday.

• It was yesterday that Jerry went to the movie.

English has many different varieties of cleft constructions, but the two major types are it-clefts and wh-clefts. Wh-clefts use “wh” words, which is most often “what” in the construction. However, why, where, how, etc. are also possibilities.

Examples and Observations

It-Clefts

• It was only last month that I decided to go back to school.

• “It was my father who sent Dyer out to proselyte. It was my father who had the blue-ice eye and the beard of gold.”

• “It was Roosevelt who impetuously blurted out the ‘unconditional surrender’ ultimatum at a press conference in Casablanca, to the surprise of Winston Churchill, who was sitting at his side and who had no alternative but to nod approval.”

Wh-Clefts

• “What I needed was a weapon. Other people, hitchhikers, told me they always carried a little something, a knife or a can of Mace, and I’d laughed, thinking there was no greater weapon than the human mind. You idiot.”

• “Strange, but what I really wanted was a dad who would come down to the police station, ​yell his head off, and then take me home to talk about what happened, to come up with a new plan for how I’d act in the future, etc. All the other guys had that. But not me. My dad left me alone in jail for the night.”

‘it’-cleft (sentence)

In English grammar, an “it”-cleft is a construction in which a single clause has been split into two sections, each with its own verb. Also called a cleft sentence.

An it-cleft begins with nonreferential it (the “cleft pronoun”), which is typically followed by a copula (i.e., a form of the verb be), a noun phrase, and a relative clause.

Examples and Observations

• “Her parents never visited her in Montreal. It was her mother that always came up with excuses.”
  (Eva Stachniak, Necessary Lies. Dundurn, 2000)

• “It was Mary who fed the few hens and looked for their eggs, so often laid in strange places, rather than in the nest. It was Mary who took care of the hive, and who never feared the bees. It was Mary again, who, when more active duties were done, would draw a low stool toward the hearth in winter or outside the cottage door in summer, and try to make or mend her own simple garments, singing to herself in Welsh, a verse or two of the old-fashioned metrical version of the Psalms, or repeating texts which she had picked up and retained in her quick, eager little brain.”
  (Mary Ropes, Mary Jones and Her Bible, 1882)

• “[I]t was in the principate of Tiberius Caesar that their druids and prophets and healers of this type were abolished.”
  (Pliny, Natural History. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook, ed. by Daniel Ogden. Oxford University Press, 2002)

• “Before he took his hot bath, Charles Waterton went to Philadelphia . . … It was here that Wilson’s American Ornithology had been published. It was here that Audubon fell out with the scientific establishment. It was here that William Cobbett opened his bookshop and defied the patriot press by selling pictures of the English nobility. It was here that the American government had its headquarters after the Declaration of Independence. It was here that the American constitution itself was devised. And it was here that Charles Waterton had his portrait painted by the man who made George Washington’s false teeth.”
  (Brian W. Edginton, Charles Waterton. Lutterworth Press, 1996)

• New Information and Given Information
  "In an it-cleft construction, the clefted phrase presents new information, while the rest of the sentence is given information. Thus, the information question in 1 below can be answered with 2, in which the answer to the question (that is, the new information) is clefted, but it can’t be answered with 3 because the clefted element is not the requested new information.

  1. Who did Stan see at the party?
  2. It was Nick that Stan saw at the party.
  3. *It was Stan who saw Nick at the party.

  That the part of the sentence following that/who in a cleft sentence presents given information is illustrated by the fact that it can refer to something just mentioned in the previous sentence. In the following example, the second sentence contains a cleft construction in which the elements following that are simply repeated from the previous sentence in the discourse.
  Alice told me that Stan saw someone at the party that he knew from his high school days. It turns out it was Nick that Stan saw at the party.
  Clearly, the element following the that in a cleft sentence represents given information."
  (Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use, 6th ed. Wadsworth, 2012)

• Functions of It-Clefts
  "The main function of the it-cleft is to mark contrastive focus. The contrast is very often implicit, as in Tuesday (not another day), the women, not the men; but the contrast may be made explicit, as in It’s the person, not the business, who is registered for VAT.
  “A different, non-contrastive use, is illustrated in the following sentence from Huxley’s work: (1) It was in 1886 that the German pharmacologist Louis Lewin published the first systematic study of the cactus, to which his own name was subsequently given. The function here is not to contrast 1886 with a different date. Rather, the function of such clefts, which often highlight expressions of time or place, is to signal the beginning of an episode in discourse. It may be the very beginning of the text, as in (1), or an oral announcement, (2); otherwise, the cleft may signal a shift to a new episode (3): (2) It is with great pleasure that I announce the name of this year’s winner . . .
  (3) It was only years later that I realised what he meant.” (Angela Downing, English Grammar: A University Course, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2006)

• Using It-Clefts to Create Dramatic Openings
  “Tell students that it-clefts are sometimes used to begin paragraphs that present a historical perspective. Choose an it-cleft that begins such a paragraph, and show students . . . how the sentence would look in its regular word order. For example, show the sentence in (67). (67) Henry Ford gave us the weekend just about 90 years ago. On September 25, 1926, in a somewhat shocking move for that time, he decided to establish a 40-hour work week, giving his employees two days off instead of one. Then show students the it-cleft version of the sentence: It was just about 90 years ago that Henry Ford gave us the weekend. Point out that this version emphasizes the time phrase just about 90 years ago and also finishes up with the information the paragraph is going to be about–Henry Ford’s introducing the 40-hour work week and hence, the weekend. Compared to the first version, it provides a more dramatic opening and leads more effectively into the rest of the paragraph.”
  (Ron Cowan, The Teacher’s Grammar of English: A Course Book and Reference Guide. Cambridge University Press, 2008)

• It-Clefts in Irish-English
  "[T]he it-cleft construction . . . is quite common in Hiberno English . . …
  “In the following example [from the play Translations by Brian Friel] Doalty uses an it-cleft construction because he wants to emphasize the fact that Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator, uses Irish and not English when he talks with people as a politician. . . .
  Dolaty: It is Irish he uses when he is traveling around scrounging votes.”
  (Alberto Álvarez Lugrís et al., A Identidade Galega E Irlandesa a Través Dos Textos: Galician and Irish Identity Through Texts. Univ. de Santiago de Compostela, 2005)

参考&引用

Understanding the Meaning of a Cleft Sentence

‘it’-cleft (sentence)

百度百科: 英语分裂句

百度百科: 强调句

维基百科: Cleft sentence