Strong as he is (meanings)

[Alexey86]

I'd say that 5a and 6a are very unlikely, 5d, 5e. 6e and 6e are very unnatural, 6b ad 6c are unlikely.

Your theoretical linguist may have twelve options, but the majority would never be uttered by most native speakers.

I understand that. Analyzing rare, unlikely, unnatural but still grammatical variants gives me a better understanding of English.

[Phaedrus]

Sorry, maybe I'm missing something, but that's exactly what I was talking about: making a comparative sentence by adding "being", we change the type of as-clause.

Why would you want to change the type of "as"-clause to a type that is different from the one you are trying to understand?

If one were trying to understand the nature of beer, would it help to change beer into wine and analyze wine?

I agree that only wider context can clarify the type of as-clause. Given that as + adj + as means to the extent that/of, and that extent can be either great or little (which means that popular as he is can mean popular to a little extent as he is) we've come to at least twelve options: . . . Phew!

I really don't think we needed to be banished to Siberia (the Linguistics sub-forum of Using English) discussing twelve permutations when it had already been shown that anaphora is irrelevant to determining whether the interpretation is contrastive/concessive or circumstantial, that putting being at the front changes the nature of the construction altogether (such that the two types of structure should not be analyzed together), and that any given case can potentially go either way.

There aren't twelve relevant options. There are two: circumstantial and contrastive/concessive. The reason I entered this thread was to demonstrate that the circumstantial interpretation is possible and received in respected grammatical literature. I have accomplished that goal. Showing that sentences which seemingly need the one interpretation or the other can be pushed the other way be imagining a different context was icing on the cake. I do not see the need for twelve permutations.

[Piscean]

I really don't think we needed to be banished to Siberia (the Linguistics sub-forum of Using English)

I suggested the move (you might think of it a a promotion rather than banishment,) because it had reached a stage where is was likely to be of little interest to most members. Those with an interest in the type of linguistic analysis that has been going on here can still follow the thread in its new home.

[Alexey86]

Why would you want to change the type of "as"-clause to a type that is different from the one you are trying to understand?

I didn't distinguish them well at the beginning. Changing one into the other has helped me better understand both.

Showing that sentences which seemingly need the one interpretation or the other can be pushed the other way be imagining a different context was icing on the cake.

To me, it was the cake.

The reason I entered this thread was to demonstrate that the circumstantial interpretation is possible and received in respected grammatical literature. I have accomplished that goal.

Then, we can end the discussion. Thank you.