science

Slifting

Slifting is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Slifting rather than just read about it. In short: In linguistics, slifting is a grammatical construction in which the embedded clause of a propositional attitude, speech report, or emotive is preposed. For instance the English sentence Nick is a great singer, Sara claims is the slifted variant of Sarah claims Nick is a great singer.

Key takeaways

Slifting belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Slifting to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Slifting from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

In linguistics, slifting is a grammatical construction in which the embedded clause of a propositional attitude, speech report, or emotive is preposed. For instance the English sentence Nick is a great singer, Sara claims is the slifted variant of Sarah claims Nick is a great singer. The concept was first identified and named by Haj Ross in 1973. Slifting is more restricted than other kinds of preposing. Sentences involving slifting are often referred to as slifting parentheticals since the content of the slifted clause must be at-issue. For instance, the example above is most naturally understood as asserting that Nick is a great singer while parenthetically acknowledging Sara as the source of this information. The examples below show that this interpretation is strong enough to produce infelicity when a preceding question establishes a context where the wrong proposition is at-issue.

Q: Why is Freedia not here? A: She quit, Sara told me. (slifting) Q: What did Sara tell you? A: # She quit, Sara told me. (slifting) Q: Why is Freedia not here? A: Sara told me she quit. (non-slifting) Q: What did Sara tell you? A: Sara told me she quit. (non-slifting) Additionally, not all embedding predicates allow slifting.

#She quit, Sara doubts. Jame'll be here next week, she emailed me. Slifted clauses also cannot have an overt complementizer.

Q: Why is Freedia not here? A: # That she quit, Sara claims. (slifting) That she quit, Sara told me. That she won the lottery, I only found out later. (non-slifting preoposing) Moreover, interrogative instances of slifting show subject-auxiliary inversion.

Will Freedia report our company's crimes to ESMA, Sara wondered. (slifting) Whether Freedia will report our company's crimes to ESMA, I don't know. (non-slifting) Ross analyzed slifting as the result of a movement rule. However, many subsequent researchers have argued that slifting is fundamentally different from true preposing and that the slifted clause may not be an embedded clause at all. Semantic analyses have been proposed which treat slifting as a kind of evidentiality.

See also Evidentiality Haj Ross Information structure Inversion (linguistics) Propositional attitude

Notes

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Slifting

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Slifting claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Slifting before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Slifting ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Slifting

In research: Slifting appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Slifting in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Slifting is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Linguistics stubs, Pragmatics, Semantics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Slifting outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Slifting in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Slifting means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Slifting out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Slifting in simple terms?

Why does Slifting matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Slifting?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Slifting.