Article published in:
Studies in Language
Vol. 42:3 (2018) ► pp. 669–707

The on-line emergence of Hebrew insubordinate she- (‘that/which/who’) clauses

A usage-based perspective on so-called ‘subordination’

| University of Haifa, Israel
This study examines the on-line emergence of insubordinate clauses in Hebrew conversation as constrained by local interactional contingencies, questioning traditional notions of grammatical ‘subordination’ and contributing to conceptions of grammar as a locally sensitive, temporally unfolding resource for social interaction. The clauses examined are syntactically unintegrated (unembedded in any matrix clause), or loosely-integrated (cannot be viewed unambiguously as constituting a relative, complement, or adverbial clause), yet they all begin with she- – the general ‘subordinating conjunction’ in traditional Modern Hebrew grammar. All 102 insubordinate she- clauses found throughout a 5.5 hour audio-recorded corpus were classified according to their discourse function: modal, elaborative, or evaluative/epistemic. Leaving aside the modal type, the remaining insubordinate she- clauses (N = 70, 69%) are shown to emerge on-line while speakers are busy performing a variety of tasks and responding to local interactional contingencies. In all of these cases she- functions as a generic ‘wildcard’ tying back to immediately prior discourse and projecting an elaboration/evaluation of it, in either same- or other-speaker talk. The findings concerning insubordinate clauses suggest a usage-based perspective also on canonical subordinate clauses, positioning canonical and syntactically unintegrated clauses at two ends of a continuum.
Keywords: insubordination, cosubordination, subordination, emergent on-line syntax, projection, interactional linguistics, spoken Hebrew syntax, elaboration, evaluation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Modal insubordinate she- clauses
  • 4.Evaluative/epistemic insubordinate she- clauses
  • 5.Elaborative insubordinate she- clauses
    • 5.1NP elaborations
      • 5.1.1NP elaborations in response to a request for elaboration
    • 5.2Entire clause elaborations
      • 5.2.1Co-constructed entire clause elaborations
    • 5.3Elaboration of a complex linguistic (and embodied) component
    • 5.4No elaborated prior
    • 5.5Requesting elaboration
  • 6.Insubordinate she- clauses between elaboration and evaluation
  • 7.Summary and discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.17065.mas
References

References

Anward, Jan
2004 ‘att’ [‘that’]. Språk och stil 131. 65–85.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira
1978  That’s a problem in Hebrew. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Linguistics Department M.A. thesis.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter
2000 On line-syntax – oder: Was es bedeuten könnte, die Zeitlichkeit der mündlichen Sprache ernst zu nehmen. Sprache und Literatur 851. 43–56. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2005 Projection in interaction and projection in grammar. Text 251. 7–36. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 Why are increments such elusive objects? An afterthought. Pragmatics 17(4). 647–658. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 On-line syntax: Thoughts on the temporality of spoken language. Language Sciences 311. 1–13. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 Syntactic structures and their symbiotic guests. Notes on analepsis from the perspective of online syntax. Pragmatics 24(3). 533–560. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Benveniste, Émile
1966 Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Bergsträsser, G.
1909 Das hebräische Präfix še . ZAW 291. 40–56.Google Scholar
Berman, Ruth
1978 Modern Hebrew Structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects.Google Scholar
Blau, Yehoshua
1966 yesodot hataxbir [Foundations of syntax]. Jerusalem: hamaxon ha’ivri lehaskala bixtav.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan
2003 Mechanisms of change in grammaticization: The role of frequency. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, 602–623. Oxford: Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace
1994 Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clift, Rebecca
2007 Grammar in time: the non-restrictive ‘which’-clause as an interactional resource. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 551. 51–82.Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth & Tsuyoshi Ono
2007 ‘Incrementing’ in conversation. A comparison of practices in English, German, and Japanese. Pragmatics 17(4). 513–552. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth & Margaret Selting
2017 Interactional Linguistics: Studying Language in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cristofaro, Sonia
2016 Routes to insubordination: A cross-linguistic perspective. In Nicholas Evans & Honoré Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination, 393–422. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf & Susanne Günthner
(eds.) 2015 Temporality in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Deutscher, Guy
2002 The Akkadian relative clauses in cross-linguistic perspective. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 921. 86–105. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, John W.
2007 The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
forthcoming. Representing discourse. Linguistics Department, University of California at Santa Barbara (Fall 2012 version). http://​www​.linguistics​.ucsb​.edu​/projects​/transcription​/representing
Du Bois, John W., Susanna Cumming, Stephan Schuetze-Coburn, & Danae Pao-lino
1992 Discourse Transcription: Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics, vol. 4. Santa Barbara: Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas
2007 Insubordination and its uses. In Irina Nicolaeva (ed.), Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations, 366–431. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Honoré Watanabe
(eds.) 2016 Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E., Barbara A. Fox, & Sandra A. Thompson
2002 Constituency and the grammar of turn increments. In Cecilia E. Ford, Barbara A. Fox & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), The Language of Turn and Sequence, 14–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E. & Sandra A. Thompson
1996 Interactional units in conversation: Syntactic, intonational, and pragmatic resources for the management of turns. In Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Interaction and Grammar, 134–184. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Barbara, Yael Maschler & Susanne Uhmann
2010 A cross-linguistic study of self-repair: Evidence from English, German, and Hebrew. Journal of Pragmatics 42(10). 2487–2505. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Barbara A. & Sandra A. Thompson
2007 Relative clauses in English conversation: Relativizers, frequency, and the notion of construction. Studies in Language 311. 293–326. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1979 On understanding grammar. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Günthner, Susanne
2011 Between emergence and sedimentation: Projecting constructions in German interactions. In Peter Auer & Stephan Pfänder (eds.), Constructions: Emerging and Emergent, 156–185. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 The dynamics of dass-constructions in everyday German interactions – a dialogical perspective. In Susanne Günthner, Wolfgang Imo, and Jörg Bücker (eds.), Grammar and Dialogism, 179–205. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hendery, Rachel
2012 Relative Clauses in Time and Space: A case study in the methods of diachronic typology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Holmstedt, Robert D.
2007 The etymologies of Hebrew ašer and še. Ancient Near Eastern Studies 431. 9–28. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Paul J.
1979 Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. In Talmi Givón (ed.), Discourse and Semantics (Syntax and Semantics, vol. 12), 213–241. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
1987 Emergent grammar. In Jon Aske, Natasha Beery, Laura Michaelis & Hana Filip (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 131, 139–157. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
1998 Emergent grammar. In Michael Tomasello (ed.), The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure, 155–175. Mahwah, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
2001 Grammatical constructions and their discourse origins: Prototype or family resemblance? In Martin Pütz, Susanne Neimeier & René Dirven (eds.), Applied Cognitive Linguistics I: Theory and Language Acquisition, 109–129. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011 Emergent grammar and temporality in interactional linguistics. In Peter Auer & Stephan Pfänder (eds.), Constructions: Emerging and Emergent, 22–44. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson
2008 Projectability and clause combining in interaction. In Ritva Laury (ed.), Crosslinguistic Studies of Clause Combining: The Multifunctionality of Conjunctions, 99–123. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott
2003 Grammaticalization, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huehnergard, John
2006 On the Etymology of the Hebrew Relative še-. In S. E. Fassberg & A. Hurvitz (eds.), Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic Setting: Typological and Historical Perspectives, 103–125. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press.Google Scholar
Keevallik, Leelo
2008 Conjunction and sequenced action: The Estonian complementizer and evidential particle et . In Ritva Laury (ed.), Crosslinguistic Studies of Clause Combining. The Multifunctionality of Conjunctions, 125–152. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1972 Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin
1968 Abstract Syntax and Latin Complementation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Landau, Rachel
1975 mishpat hazika umishpat levay hatoxen lesugav ba’ivrit shel yameynu [The relative clause and the attributive content clause in Modern Hebrew]. Bikoret Ufarshanut [Criticism and Interpretation] 7–81. 132–136.Google Scholar
Laury, Ritva & Tsuyoshi Ono
2014 The limits of grammar: Clause combining in Finnish and Japanese conversation. Pragmatics 24(3). 561–592. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Laury, Ritva & Eeva-Leena Seppänen
2008 Clause combining, interaction, evidentiality, participation structure, and the conjunction-particle continuum: The Finnish että . In Ritva Laury (ed.), Crosslinguistic Studies of Clause Combining. The Multifunctionality of Conjunctions, 153–178. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lehti-Eklund, Hanna
2002  Om att som diskursmarkör [About that as a discourse marker]. Språk och stil 111. 81–118.Google Scholar
Lerner, Gene
1991 On the syntax of sentences-in-progress. Language in Society 201. 441–458. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, John
1968 Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maschler, Yael
1994 Metalanguaging and discourse markers in bilingual conversation. Language in Society 231. 325–366. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2002 On the grammaticization of ke’ilu (‘like’, lit. ‘as if’) in Hebrew talk-in-interaction. Language in Society 311. 243–276. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011a On the emergence of adverbial connectives from Hebrew relative clause constructions. In Peter Auer & Stephan Pfänder (eds.), Constructions: Emerging and Emergent, 293–331. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011b 'al hithavutan shel tavniyot min hasiax: mishpaxat psukiyot hazika [On the emergence of constructions from discourse: The case of the family of relative clauses]. Leshonenu (‘Our Language’) 731. 167–207.Google Scholar
2012 Emergent Projecting constructions: The case of Hebrew yada (‘know’). Studies in Language 36(4). 785–847. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 The emergence of Hebrew loydea / loydat (‘I dunno masc/fem’) from interaction: Blurring the boundaries between discourse marker, pragmatic marker, and modal particle. In Andrea Sansò & Chiara Fedriani (eds.), Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles: New Perspectives, 37–69. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maschler, Yael & Fishman, Stav
Forthcoming. From multi-clausality to discourse markerhood: The Hebrew ma she- (‘what that’) construction in so-called ‘pseudo-clefts’.
Maschler, Yael & Carmit Miller Shapiro
2016 The role of prosody in the grammaticization of Hebrew naxon (‘right/true’): Synchronic and diachronic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 921. 42–73. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maschler, Yael & Bracha Nir
2014 Complementation in linear and dialogic syntax: The case of Hebrew divergently aligned discourse. Cognitive Linguistics 25(3). 523–557. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maschler, Yael, Hilla Polak-Yitzhaki, Stav Fishman, Carmit Miller Shapiro, Netanel Goretsky, Gallith Aghion & Ophir Fofliger
2017 The Haifa Corpus of Spoken Hebrew. http://​weblx2​.haifa​.ac​.il​/~corpus​/corpus​_website.
Mertzlufft, Christine & Camilla Wide
2013 The on-line emergence of postmodifying att- and dass-clauses in spoken Swedish and German. In Eva Havu & Irma Hyvärinen (eds.), Comparing and Contrasting Syntactic Structures. From Dependency to Quasi-subordination, 199–229. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne
2008 The extension of dependency beyond the sentence. Language 841. 69–119. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Michael
1981 Barai clause junctures: Toward a functional theory of interclausal relations. Canberra: Australian National University dissertation.Google Scholar
Ornan, Uzzi
2003 The mysteries of waw connective. Zeitschrift fuer die alttestamentlicheWissenschaft 1151. 241–255.Google Scholar
Panther, Klaus-Uwe & Linda L. Thornburg
2011 Emotion and desire in independent complement clauses: A case study from German. In Mario Brdar, Stefan Th. Gries & Milena Žic Fuchs (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics. Convergence and Expansion, (Human Cognitive Processing 32), 87–114. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pekarek Doehler, Simona
2011 Clause-combining and the sequencing of actions: Projector constructions in French talk-in-interaction. In Ritva Laury & Ryoko Suzuki (eds.), Subordination in Conversation: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, 103–148. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Polak-Yitzhaki, Hilla & Yael Maschler
2016 Disclaiming understanding? Hebrew 'ani lo mevin/a (‘I don’t understand masc/fem’) in everyday conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 1061. 163–183. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita
1984 Pursuing a response. In Maxwell J. Atkinson & John Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis, 152–163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Quintilian
The Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, with an English translation by H. E. Butler. London: W. Heinemann.
Roberts, Murat H.
1944 The science of idiom: A method of inquiry into the cognitive design of language. Publications of the Modern Language Association 591. 291–306. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rosén, Haiim
1976 A Textbook of Israeli Hebrew: With an Introduction to the Classical Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah
2006 Discourse marker research and theory: Revisiting and . In Kerstin Fischer (ed.), Approaches to Discourse Particles, 315–338. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
1996 Turn organization: One intersection of grammar and interaction. In Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Interaction and Grammar, 52–133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A., Gail Jefferson, & Harvey Sacks
1977 The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 531. 361–382. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Selting, Margret
2004 The ‘upward staircase’ intonation contour in the Berlin vernacular: An example of the analysis of regionalized intonation as an interactional resource. In Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen & Cecilia E. Ford (eds.), Sound Patterns in Interaction, 201–231. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Selting, Margret & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
(eds.) 2001 Studies in Interactional Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A.
2002 “Object complements” and conversation: Towards a realistic account. Studies in Language 261. 125–163. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tsadka, Yitshak
1989 taxbir veshixbur [Syntax]. Tel Aviv: Horev.Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D.
1984 A typology of syntactic relations in clause linkage. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. 542–558. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Verstraete, Jean-Christophe, Sarah D’Hertefelt & An Van Linden
2012 A typology of complement insubordination in Dutch. Studies in Language 361. 123–153. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Weinert, Regina
2012 Complement clauses in spoken German and English: Syntax, deixis and discourse-pragmatics. Folia Linguistica 46(1). 233–265. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wide, Camilla
2014 Constructions as resources in interaction. Syntactically unintegrated att ‘that’-clauses in spoken Swedish. In R. Boogaart, T. Colleman & G. Rutten (eds.), Expanding the Scope of Construction Grammar, 353–388. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Zewi, Tamar
2008 mishpetey toxen be’ivrit [Content clauses in Hebrew]. Leshonenu [Our Language] 701. 627–657.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Berman, Ruth A.
2020.  In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 375 ff. Crossref logo
Maschler, Yael
2020.  In Emergent Syntax for Conversation [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 32], ► pp. 87 ff. Crossref logo
Maschler, Yael & Stav Fishman
2020. From multi-clausality to discourse markerhood: The Hebrew ma she- ‘what that’ construction in pseudo-cleft-like structures. Journal of Pragmatics 159 ► pp. 73 ff. Crossref logo
Pekarek Doehler, Simona, Yael Maschler, Leelo Keevallik & Jan Lindström
2020.  In Emergent Syntax for Conversation [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 32], ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.