It will be tomorrow that... [cleft sentence]

[deepcosmos]

Hello, everyone,

I found the sentence below in our local dictionary, which is classified as one of the cleft sentence;
“It will be tomorrow that the schedule will be announced.”

Since I understand the cleft sentence starts with “it is/was/could have been” only and the old information is emphasized, which is already understood between speaker and hearer, I wonder if this sentence could be categorized so.

I really appreciate your explanation.

 

[Gorgiewave]

It is a cleft sentence. A cleft sentence places emphasis on the first thing mentioned.

Not a cleft sentence: The schedule will be announced tomorrow.

Cleft sentence (emphasising that the schedule, not something else, will be announced tomorrow): It is the schedule that will be announced tomorrow.

Cleft sentence (emphasising that the announcement will be made tomorrow, not on another day): It will be/is tomorrow that the schedule will be announced.

Cleft sentence (emphasising that a schedule will be announced, not something else): What will be announced tomorrow is the schedule.

 

[deepcosmos]

It is a cleft sentence. A cleft sentence places emphasis on the first thing mentioned.
Not a cleft sentence: The schedule will be announced tomorrow.

Cleft sentence (emphasising that the schedule, not something else, will be announced tomorrow): It is the schedule that will be announced tomorrow.
Cleft sentence (emphasising that the announcement will be made tomorrow, not on another day): It will be/is tomorrow that the schedule will be announced.
Cleft sentence (emphasising that a schedule will be announced, not something else): What will be announced tomorrow is the schedule.

Hi, Gorgiewave, I'm glad to have your first response with nice explanation. Today I've firstly seen the explanation which reads even the verb with future tense could be used in the cleft sentence. It is surprising that there has been no such clear comment in the quite well known grammar books (of course, within my limited experiences).

 

[dojibear]

It will be tomorrow that the schedule will be announced.

I prefer "It is" in this particular sentence. Maybe that's AE vs BE, or just my AE dialect. The cleft sentences are not predicting a future event. They are stating an already-existing plan -- so I'd use "it is".

I'd use "will be" in "will be announced", but "It is the schedule" and "It is tomorrow" and "What...is the schedule".

@Gorgiewave's explanation in post #2 is very good. I learned from it.