Insubordination: Central issues and open questions

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed an ever-increasing interest in insubordination and related phenomena, particularly since the appearance of Evans' ( 2007) seminal paper 'Insubordination and its uses'. Since then, numerous studies have been published on various types of insubordinate constructions in a wide variety of typologically different languages from different analytical perspectives (see especially Evans and Watanabe 2016a and references therein).What makes insubordination so intriguing is that it presents a challenge for traditional grammatical frameworks owing to its ambivalent, Janus-like appearance, which combines subordinate structure with main clause function. This dual nature is neatly summarized in Evans's definition, which has by now become accepted currency in the field: "the conventionalized main clause use of what, on prima facie grounds, appear to be formally subordinate clauses" (Evans 2007: 367). 1 An insubordinate clause thus has the appearance of a subordinate clause, but has been reanalysed as a main clause. It is in this subordinate form that insubordination differs from nonsubordination (de Vries e.g. 2007), which is described as a strategy of paratactic text planning that includes parenthesis, apposition, coordination, juxtaposition and hedging. 2 Some illustrative examples of insubordination are given in ( 1) to (4).(1) ENGLISH (ICE-GB:s1a-089-159)If you'll just come next door.() SWEDISH (D'Hertefelt 2015: 23, IC) https://issuu.com/danielheiniemi/docs/o4u05_tr/19) Att du aldrig kan passa tider! COMP you never can.PRS watch.INF times 'Why can't you ever keep track of the time!' (lit.: That you never can watch the time!) (3) SPANISH (MABPE2-01b, COLA M) Juan (.) que v-a a llov-er VOC COMP go-PRS.IND.3SG to rain-INF 'John, [QUE] it's going to rain. (..) […]' 1 This is a refined version of an earlier definition given in Evans (1988: 255), which identified insubordination as "the use of a formally subordinate clause type as a main clause". 2 De Vries defines nonsubordination as "parataxis in the broad sense. It means the equipollent ranking of clauses or constituents: if β is paratactically construed with respect to α, β is not subordinated to α, and β does not restrict the meaning of α; rather it adds information to α." (de Vries 2007: 203; n.d.); cf. in this context also Heine et al.'s (2016) notion of "theticals".(4) JAPANESE (Evans 2009:1) Are wo mi-te ! that ACC look-CNJ 'Look at that!'As can be seen from the examples, insubordinate clauses have all the formal cues of subordinate clauses. These are, for instance, subordinators, infinitive, participal or subjunctive inflections on the verbs, subordinate clause word order, depending on the language-specific markers of subordination. What is absent, however, is a matrix clause. Instead, they areat least in their prototypical formsstand-alone structures as a result of their reanalysis over time as conventionalized independent constructions. Insubordination thus has an inherent diachronic side to it. Insubordinate clauses may look like subord...

Cláusulas insubordinadas no Português Arcaico: notas preliminares

“…Os autores referem-se a essas construções como semi-insubordinadas e afirmam que o elemento-matriz pode ser um substantivo, um adjetivo ou um advérbio. Sansiñena (2019) também faz menção à semi-insubordinação, em alusão à existência de um elemento anteposto às orações formalmente subordinadas que não configura uma cláusula completa.…”

“…O elemento da principal pode ser um substantivo, adjetivo ou advérbio. Outros autores denominam exemplos semelhantes a esses de pseudo-insubordinação, em que identificam orações formalmente subordinadas introduzidas por um único elemento da principal, ou seja, tem um elemento inicial, mas não é uma oração completa(SANSIÑENA, 2019). Apesar dessas possibilidades analíticas, não há, contudo, nenhum impedimento para que tais construções sejam chamadas de insubordinadas e é o que fazemos.…”

Insubordination in Archaic and Classical Latin: commands, requests, wishes and assertives

“…main vs. subordinate clause) could actually be instances of insubordination (cf. Beijering et al 2019b;D'Hertefelt 2018;Evans and Watanabe 2016). 6 Evans had argued that the motor behind the creation and conventionalization of insubordinate construction was ellipsis and proposed a neat evolutionary scheme from which a subordinate clause (e.g.…”

“…'I knew it!' (literally: 'if I did not think it') (D'Hertefelt 2018: 119) While recent linguistic scholarship has yielded much evidence for insubordination cross-linguistically (see the overview and references in Evans and Watanabe [2016], D'Hertefelt [2018], and Beijering et al [2019b]), the most recent Latin syntactic overviews of Touratier (1994), Pinkster (2015Pinkster ( , 2021 and Baños Baños (2009 make no mention of the phenomenon of insubordination for such clause types. The extensive literature reviews on mood and modality in Latin and its review by Calboli (1966Calboli ( , 1968Calboli ( , 2011Calboli ( , 2013) also do not discuss an insubordination approach.…”

“…This study has also generated research on cases which do not fall neatly within the definition of insubordination, for example because they are only syntactically independent but discursively dependent (so-called semi-insubordinate constructions) such as Funny that you should say that, for which seeBeijering et al (2019a).4 la Roi JOLL-2022-2008_proof ■ 2 May 2022 ■ 9:37 am…”