After re-reading my post below I had a moment of syntactic beguilement at my own use of the was that what X was that X construction: Our group consensus was that what he really meant was that a linguistic topic was "interesting" if it helped him make his argument.
I imagined four relevant sentences; two grammatical/acceptable and two ungrammatical/unacceptable according to my own most excellent judgment*. My challenge to you, dear reader, is to explain why sentences (1-2) are grammatical/unacceptable and why sentences (3-4) are ungrammatical/unacceptable.
- our consensus was that what he really meant was X
- our consensus was he really meant (that) X
- *our consensus was what he really meant (that) X
- *our consensus was he really meant was X
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3. *our consensus was what he really meant (that) X
4. *our consensus was he really meant was X
Well for #4, "meant" doesn't allow "was X" as a complement; in "what he meant was" the "was" goes with the "what". Likewise in #3, the cleft construction "what he meant" needs the "was".
If you pull out the "our consensus was" you'll have "what he really meant that" and "he really meant was" - those clearly don't work.
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