Does "it's ok to ..." count as a cleft construction?

Question

I am wondering if "it's ok to..." (e.g. as in "it's ok for us to leave now") would count as an it-cleft construction. When I consider Quirk et al.'s (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, it seems to me like all the components are given, the focus might be argued to lie on the "ok", and so forth - still, it seems a little odd to me and I am unsure about this. Can anybody shed some light?

No, it's not a cleft sentence; it's Extraposition, with a dummy it subject. The heavy infinitive subject for us to leave now gets moved to the end and the dummy replaces it. — John Lawler, Mar 31 '20 at 17:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-31T21:45:53.107

1

A cleft construction presupposes fronting of components that are usually placed elsewhere in syntactic terms: "My father lied" vs. "It's my father who lied". This case seems different since the it-clause is the canonical structure vs. less usual "for us to leave now is ok"

edited Mar 31 '20 at 21:45

answered Mar 31 '20 at 15:14

perfect, that makes sense, thanks! – Yato Mar 31 '20 at 17:05

Does "it's ok to ..." count as a cleft construction?

1 Answers1