another query to pass on

[Johanna Rubba]

Here's a fellow who is looking for some corpus evidence. Please reply
directly to him. Thanks! --Jo

Message 1: Q: THAT-clause subjects
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 18:48:45 +0200
From: J-C Khalifa <jck at ricky.univ-poitiers.fr>
Subject: Q: THAT-clause subjects

I was just wondering whether there has been any work at all on the
acceptability of clausal subjects like, say :

THAT Arnold was elected

which are perfectly acceptable with adjectival predicates like :
_________was surprising
or verbal predicates like: ___________surprised everyone.

with bare copulas followed by another THAT-clause. In other words, are
there any contexts where THAT ARNOLD WAS ELECTED WAS THAT VOTERS WERE
BLIND
might be acceptable? They are (are they?) with verbs like MEAN (That
Arnold
was elected means that voters were blind) Does anyone know of any such
sentences in corpora, and/or any relevant work into that question?

I'll gladly post a summary if feedback proves interesting. Thanks in advance,

                 Jean-Charles Khalifa


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
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