I was writing something on Reddit, and I was casually checking my writing when I realized I had forced myself into a particularly strange situation.
I was making an argument where I first established a term of art, and then defined what that term of art did not mean as a way to establish what the term of art actually meant.
However, when I went to finish the argument, I got the phrase:
"What X actually is is…"
where X is the subject.
Is this actually correct? Is the word "is" repeated after the phrase? The phrase
"What X actually is…"
doesn't seem correct. It seems like it is missing a verb.
Related-to, but not answered-by, this question. (The answers provide a name, but contradict each other on whether the usage is grammatically-correct, which is the premise of my question.)
Best Answer
What X actually is is a clause that functions as the subject of some such sentence as
Here is another example of a clause functioning as the subject of a sentence:
You can use both of them as direct objects of I don't know...
That the word is appears twice in a row in the sentence you ask about may seem disconcerting at first, but it is not unknown.