Results or Results of ?

[pdh0224]

Dear teacher,

Mr. Steele went on to say that "it's results that matter, and President Bush does not just talk about hope, he stands on a record of putting hope into action for America."


Q : I think "of" is omitted behind of "results". What do you thin k?


All the best,

[Dixie]

I don't think so

[Alan]

No, no 'of' is needed here. The sentence means simply 'results (and not other things) matter'.

[pdh0224]

No, no 'of' is needed here. The sentence means simply 'results (and not other things) matter'.

Q : Could you show me the structure? I don't understand the meaning and why three words are placed in a row yet.

Mr. Steele went on to say that "it's results that matter, and President Bush does not just talk about hope, he stands on a record of putting hope into action for America."



All the best,

[p.patrick]

It's a grammatical structure that you can just remember without grammatical analyse.It is...that.Maybe you'll construe it as a relative clause with that being the relative pron,and the noun before it the antecedent.However,it's not the case.There're generally two ways used by grammarians to construe the structure.First,take the sentence"it is results that matter"for example,that-clause together modifiies the pron"it"but not results,thus,"it"is the antecedent,and "that-clause"is the relative clause.second,some construe the "that"here as "that which",as a result the"it"ahead refers to the whole that-clause construed as i aforementioned.

[Alan]

It is a cleft sentence.

Compare, e.g.

It is Bob that lent me the book.
It is this book that he lent me.
etc. etc.

Surely you are familiar with this kind of sentence pattern!!

[pdh0224]

It is a cleft sentence.

Compare, e.g.

It is Bob that lent me the book.
It is this book that he lent me.
etc. etc.

Surely you are familiar with this kind of sentence pattern!!

it's results(S) that matter(V)

=> results are important.

Is that right?

[Alan]

Right!