The interface between discourse and grammar: The fact is that

The fact is has variants such as fact is which are grammatically irregular and used with particular functions in spoken language. It is argued that the new structures should be analysed as emergent 'syntactic gestalts' shaped by their use in discourse rather than as grammatically compositional. In the analysis proposed the different variants belong to a collocational framework licensing some forms while disallowing other variants. The examples which are taken from the British National Corpus are analysed with regard to meaning, discourse function and prosody.