Slifting

1. Q: Why is Freedia not here?
   A: She quit, Sara told me. (slifting)
2. Q: What did Sara tell you?
   A: # She quit, Sara told me. (slifting)

1. Q: Why is Freedia not here?
   A: Sara told me she quit. (non-slifting)
2. Q: What did Sara tell you?
   A: Sara told me she quit. (non-slifting)

Additionally, not all embedding predicates allow slifting.

1. #She quit, Sara doubts.
2. Jame'll be here next week, she emailed me.

Slifted clauses also cannot have an overt complementizer.

1. Q: Why is Freedia not here?
   A: # That she quit, Sara claims. (slifting)
2. 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.

1. Will Freedia report our company's crimes to ESMA, Sara wondered. (slifting)
2. 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.