Les parents pauvres de la nominalisation en français

Rather than a subordinating conjunction, French que is an “embedder”, a “nominalizer”, since it can introduce a subject clause, where there is neither linking, nor subordination. It makes it possible to transform a sentence into the component of a sentence, functioning as a nominal. In some contexts, que is not allowed, for instance, with certain prepositions, and is then replaced by ce que and le fait que/de, his poor relations (“parents pauvres”), less investigated, and functioning as free or contextual variants. Ce que behaves like a single word, a grammatical instrument, devoid of any meaning, while le fait que/de allow insertions and keep some of their original meaning, which accounts for their incompatibility with non factive contexts.