Use of Wh-Clefts in Conversation
Kim (1995) has carried out one of the most complete studies of wh-clefts in English conver-sation. He found 76 instances of wh-clefts in naturally occurring conversations and found that alt but seven of the tokens bad four types of verbs in the W/HCIHUSC (Kim 1995:25)):
1. Verbs expressing a speaker-internal state (29 tokens): realize, want, feel, think, enjoy, know, object to, etc.
2. Verbs expressing a metalinguistic dimension (22 tokens): mean, say, ask, etc.
3. Verbs marking meta-events (12 tokens): happen (e.g., What does happen is (that) there's a tendency to forget /Mr.)
4. Verbs marking meta-actions (6 tokens): do (e.g., What I'm doing right now is the vacuuming.)
Therefore, the types of verbs used in the wh-clause are highly constrained and give us a good general sense of the interactional functions of wh-clefts, which according to Kim (1995-253) are: