Using a corpus study of examples from spoken New Zealand English, this study offers a detailed analysis of the formal and discursive characteristics of several sub-types of inferentials (positive, negative, as if and like inferentials). Notwithstanding their apparent formal differences from the prototypical cleft, inferentials are all the same best analysed as a type of cleft. It is demonstrated how similar the contextualized interpretations of clefts and inferentials are and how these make up a function of their lexis and syntax.