Where do Cleft Sentences Come From?

Most analyses of cleft sentences have assumed that the subject it of these constructions is semantically empty. It is argued here, however, that cleft sentences are reduced forms of right-dislocated pseudo-clefts, where it is a pronominal reference to the topic which appears at the end of the sentence. The fact that this NP is always pronominalized with it is shown to follow from a more general principle which governs pronominalization in ‘identifying’ sentences.