Consider the sentence in (1).

(1) She remembered how the birds flew through the air with such grace.

To determine whether how the birds flew through the air with such grace is a constituent of (1), which of the following is the correct application of the Pseudocleft Test?

Question

Consider the sentence in (1).

(1) She remembered how the birds flew through the air with such grace.

To determine whether how the birds flew through the air with such grace is a constituent of (1), which of the following is the correct application of the Pseudocleft Test?

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Pseudoclefts take the diagnostic form "What [clause] was [candidate constituent]". If substituting the candidate into that structure yields a grammatical sentence with the intended meaning, the candidate is a constituent.

1. Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- Constituency: a group of words that functions as a single unit in syntax.
- Embedded wh-clause as complement: "how the birds flew through the air with such grace" is an embedded interrogative (wh-) clause that can function as the direct object (complement) of "remembered."
- Pseudocleft test: form "What [matrix clause] was [candidate]" to test whether the candidate forms a constituent.

2. Step-by-step application of the pseudocleft test
- Start with the original: She remembered how the birds flew through the air with such grace.
- Form the pseudocleft by fronting "What" and making the remainder the predicate: What she remembered was [how the birds flew through the air with such grace].
- The resulting sentence: "What she remembered was how the birds flew through the air with such grace." This is grammatical and retains the meaning: the thing she remembered was that clause.

3. Intermediate steps (syntactic substitution)
- Original object = candidate C = "how the birds flew through the air with such grace."
- Pseudocleft template: What + subject + verb + was + C
- Fill in: What she remembered was C → yields a grammatical sentence.

4. Why the correct answer is correct
- The pseudocleft sentence is grammatical and semantically coherent, showing C behaves as a single constituent (an embedded wh-clause) serving as the complement of "remembered."

5. Why the other options are incorrect
- Option 2 ("It was how... that she remembered") is an it-cleft, not the pseudocleft diagnostic requested; while grammatical, it uses a different cleft test.
- Option 3 ("It was with such grace that she remembered how...") clefts only the PP "with such grace," not the full clause, and misplaces focus.
- Option 4 ("It was the birds flew... that she remembered how.") is ungrammatical and disrupts clause structure.

6. Conclusion
The correct application of the pseudocleft test is "What she remembered was how the birds flew through the air with such grace." This matches the provided answer.

Consider the sentence in (1). (1) She remembered how the birds flew through the air with such grace. To determine whether how the birds flew through the air with such grace is a constituent of (1), which of the following is the correct application of the Pseudocleft Test? 单项选择题

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