usage of time and place in the cleft sentence

Question

In this link, I found the sentence '' It is August that you are going on holiday''.

I wonder why it is not ''in August''? I think the sentence '' It is in August that you are going on holiday'' will be sound.

The second question is ''Can I use where/when in it-cleft sentence?''

E.g, It was the market where I met her.

Whether the statement with where would be considered a "cleft" depends on the definition of "cleft". Although I consider the where-clause similar to a that-clause in this construction, there are linguists who would disagree with me, who would call the phrase introduced by where a locative complement and say that such a sentence was not a cleft. I don't keep up with contemporary grammar, and would defer to them in such matters. — Tᴚoɯɐuo, Sep 5 '17 at 11:33

LawrenceC · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-05 12:16:43Z

1

The difference in meaning is one of time granularity.

It is August that X - Speaker is thinking in terms of months, e.g. vacations, etc. are allocated by month, not by anything smaller.

It is in August that X - Speaker is thinking in terms of weeks or days, but is concerned with what is happening in August.

The second question is ''Can I use where/when in it-cleft sentence?''

Where as relative pronoun (or any relative pronoun really) doesn't care if the subject of the first clause is it.

It was yesterday that I saw him.

It was the moldy one which made him sick.

It was 4:00 when he disappeared.

answered Sep 5 '17 at 12:16

LawrenceC

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I don't buy this distinction. Strictly speaking, August with no preposition is "invalid" anyway. Consider, for example, It's 1955 that Einstein died, which is syntactically equivalent - where almost all native speakers would insist on the preposition in being included. OP's prepositionless version is just "marginally acceptable" sloppy speech, not a valid way of conveying a fine nuance. – FumbleFingers Sep 5 '17 at 14:15

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