Insubordination
Editors
The phenomenon of insubordination can be defined diachronically as the recruitment of main clause structures from subordinate structures, or synchronically as the independent use of constructions exhibiting characteristics of subordinate clauses. Long marginalised as uncomfortable exceptions, insubordinated clause phenomena turn out to be surprisingly widespread, and provide a vital empirical testing ground for various central theoretical issues in current linguistics – the interplay of langue and parole, the emergence of structure, the question of where productive syntactic rules give way to constructions, the role of prosody in language change, and the question of how far grammars are produced by isolated speakers as opposed to being collaboratively constructed in dialogue. This volume – the first book-length treatment on the topic – assembles studies of languages on all continents, by scholars who bring a range of approaches to bear on the topic, from historical linguistics to corpus studies to typology to conversational analysis.
[Typological Studies in Language, 115] 2016. xii, 435 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Preface | pp. vii–viii
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Map | pp. ix–x
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Author affiliations | pp. xi–xii
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Chapter 1. The dynamics of insubordination: An overviewNicholas Evans and Honoré Watanabe | pp. 1–38
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Chapter 2. On insubordination and cooptationBernd Heine, Gunther Kaltenböck and Tania Kuteva | pp. 39–64
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Chapter 3. Running in the family: Patterns of complement insubordination in GermanicJean-Christophe Verstraete and Sarah D'Hertefelt | pp. 65–88
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Chapter 4. Independent si-clauses in Spanish: Functions and consequences for insubordinationScott A. Schwenter | pp. 89–112
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Chapter 5. Revisiting the functional typology of insubordination: Insubordinate que-constructions in Spanish*Pedro Gras | pp. 113–144
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Chapter 6. Insubordinated conditionals in spoken and non-spoken ItalianEdoardo Lombardi Vallauri | pp. 145–170
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Chapter 7. Insubordination in the Tsezic LanguagesBernard Comrie, Diana Forker and Zaira Khalilova | pp. 171–182
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Chapter 8. Ordinary insubordination as transient discourseArienne Dwyer | pp. 183–208
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Chapter 9. Insubordination and the establishment of genealogical relationship across EurasiaMartine Robbeets | pp. 209–246
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Chapter 10. Insubordination in Japanese diachronicallyHeiko Narrog | pp. 247–282
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Chapter 11. Insubordination in AleutAnna Berge | pp. 283–309
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Chapter 12. Insubordination in Sliammon SalishHonoré Watanabe | pp. 309–340
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Chapter 13. Insubordination in interaction: The Cha’palaa counter-assertiveSimeon Floyd | pp. 341–366
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Chapter 14. How fascinating! Insubordinate exclamationsMarianne Mithun | pp. 367–392
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Chapter 15. Routes to insubordination: A cross-linguistic perspectiveSonia Cristofaro | pp. 393–422
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Language Index | pp. 423–424
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Author Index | pp. 425–428
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Subject Index | pp. 429–436
“Insubordination is insubordinate in several delectable ways, as it inverts the tendency in much of linguistics to subordinate conversational data, contexts of use, and diachrony. The volume explodes with original fieldwork and thorough, extensive corpus-based studies. It draws out theoretical consequences that are bound to challenge and fascinate.”
Adele Goldberg, Princeton University
“This innovative volume, a skilfully curated collection of papers that targets a wide variety of languages, yields the clearest picture to date of insubordination as a critical nexus between conversational practice, inference, affect and grammar architecture. While ellipsis has long been a part of syntactic theory building, insubordination has been marginalized as incompleteness or error—or ignored entirely. What the studies in this volume make clear, however, is that we simply cannot study the emergence of grammar, grammar change or the syntax-semantics interface without recognizing the constellation of usage factors that yield insubordinate structures over real time and over historic time. Transcending the theoretical controversies of the moment, this volume provides a linguistic resource of lasting value, and marks a turning point in our progress toward a human-centered model of grammar.”
Laura Michaelis, University of Colorado at Boulder
“Rich with evidence showing that ‘insubordination’ is much more widespread across languages than had been previously documented, and that it has far-reaching diachronic and interactional implications, this is a fascinating ‘must read’ for linguists of any persuasion interested in how language structure emerges and changes in the context of everyday usage.”
Sandra A. Thompson, University of California, Santa Barbara
Audio files
Chapter 1. The dynamics of insubordination
audio
Chapter 6. Insubordinated conditionals in spoken and non-spoken Italian
audio
Chapter 12. Insubordination in Sliammon Salish
audio
Cited by
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2022. On the extended uses of -ki and -m nominalization constructions as face-threat mitigators in Korean. Lingua 274 ► pp. 103230 ff. 
Berman, Ruth A.
2020. Chapter 11. Nominalizations. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 375 ff.
Bossaglia, Giulia, Heliana Mello & Tommaso Raso
2020. Chapter 7. Illocution as a unit of reference for spontaneous speech. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 221 ff.
Catasso, Nicholas
2021. Insubordination. Theoretical and empirical issues. Glottotheory 12:1 ► pp. 85 ff.
Daniels, Don
2020. The history of tense and aspect in the Sogeram family. Journal of Historical Linguistics 10:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
2022. The history of tense and aspect in the Sogeram family. In Development of Tense and Aspect Systems [Benjamins Current Topics, 123], ► pp. 21 ff.
Fried, Mirjam & Pavel Machač
2022. Intonation as a cue to epistemic stance in one type of insubordinate clauses. Folia Linguistica 56:1 ► pp. 183 ff.
2022. Intonation as a cue to epistemic stance in one type of insubordinate clauses. Folia Linguistica 56:1 ► pp. 183 ff.
Gildea, Spike & Jóhanna Barðdal
Gras, Pedro & María Sol Sansiñena
2017. Exclamatives in the functional typology of insubordination: Evidence from complement insubordinate constructions in Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics 115 ► pp. 21 ff.
Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck & Tania Kuteva
Kaltenböck, Gunther & Evelien Keizer
2022. Insubordinate if-clauses in FDG: Degrees of independence. Open Linguistics 8:1 ► pp. 675 ff.
Kim, Minju
2020. Korean general extenders tunci ha and kena ha ‘or something’. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 30:4 ► pp. 557 ff.
2020. From connective construction to final particle: The emergence of the Korean disapproval markerhakonun. Linguistics 58:6 ► pp. 1581 ff.
Kuo, Yueh Hsin
2021. Morphosyntactic vagueness and directionality. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 9:1 ► pp. 95 ff.
2022. Bidirectionality between modal and conditional constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Diachronica 39:1 ► pp. 88 ff.
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee
2019. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization,
La Roi, Ezra
2020. The Variation of Classical Greek Wishes. Glotta 96:1 ► pp. 213 ff.
Lastres–López, Cristina
2020. Subordination and insubordination in contemporary spoken English. English Today 36:2 ► pp. 48 ff.
Luk, Ellison & Jean-Christophe Verstraete
2022. Conjunctions and clause linkage in Australian languages. Studies in Language 46:3 ► pp. 594 ff.
Maschler, Yael
2018. The on-line emergence of Hebrew insubordinateshe- (‘that/which/who’) clauses. Studies in Language 42:3 ► pp. 669 ff.
2020. Chapter 4. The insubordinate – subordinate continuum. In Emergent Syntax for Conversation [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 32], ► pp. 87 ff.
McGregor, William B.
2017. There’s grammar and there’s grammar just as there’s usage and there’s usage. English Text Construction 10:2 ► pp. 199 ff.
Ohara, Kyoko
2018. Chapter 5. Relations between frames and constructions. In Constructicography [Constructional Approaches to Language, 22], ► pp. 141 ff.
Pekarek Doehler, Simona, Yael Maschler, Leelo Keevallik & Jan Lindström
2020. Chapter 1. Complex syntax-in-interaction. In Emergent Syntax for Conversation [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 32], ► pp. 1 ff.
Tao, Hongyin
2020. Chapter 4. Formulaicity without expressed multiword units. In Fixed Expressions [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 315], ► pp. 71 ff.
Westerlund, Torbjörn
2019. Switch-reference and Insubordination in Ngarla (Ngayarta, Pama-Nyungan). Australian Journal of Linguistics 39:2 ► pp. 174 ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 march 2023. 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.
Subjects & Metadata
BIC Subject: CFK – Grammar, syntax
BISAC Subject: LAN009060 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Syntax