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We usually begin sentences with their grammatical subject. But sometimes we move things to
the front for emphasis.
Moving something to the beginning of a sentence in this way is called fronting. Fronting is
very common in informal speech. The words that are usually fronted are objects and
complements.
A very nice time we had yesterday. (= Yesterday we had a very nice time.)
Nice people they are! (= They are nice people.)
Lovely she is! (=She is lovely)
How she got the goods through customs I don’t understand. (= I don’t understand how
she got the goods through customs.)
What I should do now I don’t know. (= I don’t know what I should do now.)
Adverbs and adverb particles are often fronted when giving instructions to small children.
•"Before the march of the flames were flung picket lines of soldiers."
(Jack London, "Story of an Eyewitness: The San Francisco Earthquake." Collier's Weekly,
May 5, 1906)
•"Powerful you have become Dooku, the dark side I sense in you."
In a few exclamatory expressions, a noun is fronted before that, but these are uncommon in
modern English.
How she got the gun through customs we never found out.
Fronting
Adverbials (place)
Participles
Other examples:
When part of a sentence is moved from its normal position to the beginning of the sentence,
we call this fronting. The part of the sentence moved to the front might be the object or some
other compliment, an adverbial or even the main verb itself.
Fronting is mainly used by writers (authors, journalists etc) for dramatic effect. It is not
common in everyday speech.
It is useful to be able to recognize fronting when you see it. However, you do not need to use
these structures to demonstrate a good working knowledge of English.
These notes cover some of the more common uses of fronting. There are others but they are
not very common.
Students should not think that fronting is a general structure for giving emphasis.
There are other, far more common, ways of giving emphasis more generally (adverbs,
superlative adjectives, auxiliaries, cleft sentences etc.)
Note: The word 'there' is omitted and the subject and verb change position.
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Fronting with question-word clauses
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