Slifting

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The preposing of an embedded clause containing reported speech or beliefs. uncountable

    "The rule of Slifting (described in Ross 1973) moves complement clauses and adjoins them to the left of the original embedding structure as a coordinate clause, leaving the rest of the structure as a tag."

Example

More examples

"The rule of Slifting (described in Ross 1973) moves complement clauses and adjoins them to the left of the original embedding structure as a coordinate clause, leaving the rest of the structure as a tag."

Etymology

Blend of sentence + lifting. Coined by American linguist John R. Ross.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.