Chapter published in:
Emergent Syntax for Conversation: Clausal patterns and the organization of action
Edited by Yael Maschler, Simona Pekarek Doehler, Jan Lindström and Leelo Keevallik
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 32] 2020
► pp. 87–126

The insubordinate – subordinate continuum

Prosody, embodied action, and the emergence of Hebrew complex syntax

This chapter examines the continuum stretching between Hebrew syntactically integrated and unintegrated (‘insubordinate’) she-‘that/which/who’-clauses produced following final/continuing intonation contours in naturally-occurring interaction. Leaving aside modal insubordinate she-clauses, I show that in all of these cases she- ties back to an immediately prior stretch of interaction – verbal and/or embodied – and projects an elaboration or evaluation of it, without much concern about which particular type of complex construction – relative, complement, or adverbial (if any) – is being created. The data suggest that rather than viewing insubordinate clauses as imperfect realizations of the canonical ‘subordinate’ variety resulting from the disintegration of complex syntactic patterns, canonical, syntactically integrated varieties of Hebrew relative, complement, and adverbial clauses may be regarded as grammaticizations from syntactically less integrated varieties.
Keywords: subordination, insubordination, Hebrew, grammaticization, prosody
Published online: 17 February 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.32.04mas
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