The it-cleft is introduced by the third person singular neuter pronoun. This pronoun may either be a personal pronoun (‘it’), as is more common in English, or a demonstrative pronoun (‘that’), as is more common in Dutch and West Frisian. The second element of the cleft is the copula, usually a form of the verb to be. The third element of the cleft is usually a NP followed by a relative clause. So the elements of an it-cleft are:

• The third person singular neuter pronoun
• A form of the verb weze ‘be’
• An XP, usually a Noun Phrase (NP)

It-clefts tend to contain definite NPs, and definite NPs usually provide us with a known participant, a topic. Thus the it-cleft is associated with new information about a topic. Where English uses an it-cleft, continental West Germanic languages tend to use a that-cleft. English is a subject-oriented language, whereas the continental West Germanic languages are topic-oriented languages. In Saterland Frisian, there is no distinction between the personal neuter pronoun (‘it’) and the demonstrative neuter pronoun (‘that’). Below some examples are discussed of clefts in Saterland Frisian:

This example shows that the subject-cleft of English translates as a topic-cleft in Continental West Germanic, in which two topic pronouns appear: first the neuter pronoun, then the masculine pronoun. The following example involves a cleft based on a feminine noun:

The following example involves a cleft in which the relative clause takes the form of an infinitival clause which lacks an overt relative pronoun.

The (underlined) NP in the superordinate clause has the function of an adverbial in the (bracketed) relative clause. In the tensed equivalent of the bracketed relative clause, the relative would have been introduced by a relative pronoun of manner. In English it would be ‘that’s the way in which’, or by means of a headless relative headed by the interrogative: ‘that’s how’. The same remarks apply to the following example:

Here the relative pronoun has as its antecedent a temporal expression which is a predicate NP in the superordinate clause while functioning as an adverbial of time in the relative clause. An underscore indicates the position in which the relative pronoun is interpreted. The following example involves an infinitive communicating the content of the antecedent noun:

The examples make it clear that clefts provide focus not only for expressions functioning as verbal arguments in the relative but also for expressions functioning as adverbials of time or manner in the subordinate clause.

A wh-cleft is introduced by a free relative clause which presents the background information. The second element of the cleft is the copula, usually a form of the verb to be. The third element of the cleft is usually a NP followed by a relative clause. So the elements of a wh-cleft are:

• A free relative clause
• The verb weze be
• An XP, usually a Noun Phrase (NP)

The third element receives the focus. It is the most important piece of information at that point in the conversation or discourse. An example is the following:

Here the wh-cleft puts the coordination of the two APs in focus. The coordination of the two APs expresses a judgment (the first AP) and a way of behaviour (the second AP, which is an infinitive of which the object argument is predicated of the external subject, the free relative). No example could be found in the corpus of a NP as the focused element.

A there-cleft contains the following constituents from left to right:

• The impersonal subject der ‘there’
• The verb weze be
• An indefinite NP
• A relative clause

It is used to present new information which is put in focus. An example is provided below:

The there-cleft is a special case of the indefinite there-construction. The relative clause must be interpreted in a non-restrictive way. We can rephrase the there cleft as an ordinary sentence:

To put it in semantic terms, the relative clause in (7) is interpreted as the second argument of the quantifier, which is normally expressed as a main clause VP. The point of the there-cleft is to present a new participant and focus on new information about this participant.