Bernd Heine

Chapter 2. On insubordination and cooptation

The chapter is concerned more generally with what, following Evans (2007), we call insubordinated (or insubordinate) clauses, that is, with the conventionalized main clause use of what, prima facie, appear to be formally subordinate clauses. Insubordinated clauses are, as we argue here, information units that are coopted from a construction type [matrix clause – subordinate clause] where the matrix clause is implied but not formally expressed. Based on recent findings on discourse grammar analysis (Kaltenbock et al. 2011; Heine et al. 2013), three basic types of insubordinated clauses are distinguished and the nature of such clauses is accounted for with reference to the mechanism of cooptation from one domain of grammar to another.