A Theoretical and Empirical Study of the Derivation Mechanism of the Meaning and Discourse Function of Nominalizing Constructions in English and Japanese

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The It is that-clause construction is structurally similar to the No da-construction in that the copula takes a nominalized clause as its complement. Due to its structural similarities, the It is that-clause construction corresponds well with the No da-construction semantically. The syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of the It is that-clause construction, however, have not yet been fully elucidated. The semantic and functional characteristics of the It is that-clause construction have been cross-linguistically borne out by comparison with the No da-construction in Japanese in this project. We have endeavored to clarify some characteristics of various English constructions corresponding to the No da-construction as theoretically as possible, referring to collected linguistic data. A unified account of the No da-construction and its equivalent constructions in English has also made it possible to pierce straight to the heart of the No da-construction. In other words, we have compared and contrasted both languages from a common viewpoint to clarify the similarities and the differences of the process of expressing the object of cognition or consciousness.