This lemma introduces structural characteristics of emphatic sentences: shì…de 是…的 ‘be…de’, bare shì without de, and (shì)…de sentences. Despite often being interchangeably treated as clefts, they will be reviewed separately. Section 1 summarizes two main approaches to shì…de: predication approach (§1.1), and particle de approach (§1.2). Bare shi-sentences and optional shi sentences will be discussed in section 2 and section 3 respectively.