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Exclamatives in the functional typology of insubordination: evidence from complement insubordinate constructions in Spanish

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

Insubordination is defined as the phenomenon whereby a formally subordinate clause is conventionally used as a main or independent clause. Evans (2007) places exclamation and evaluation in the second macro-function of insubordination, i.e. expressing subjective modal meanings that qualify the contents of the clause. More recent works propose a higher generalization, arguing that insubordinate constructions express interpersonal meanings, and Van linden & Van de Velde (2014) claim that these meanings “almost invariably go together with exclamative illocutionary force” (2014: 228). Using data from different varieties of Spanish, we show that a narrow definition of ‘exclamative’ allows to describe the properties of individual exclamative-evaluative constructions in Spanish more adequately. We argue that exclamative-evaluative constructions constitute a separate subset of insubordinate constructions, with their own formal and interpretive features. From a methodological point of view, we show that a constructional approach allows to operationalize the notion of insubordination and to set apart exclamative-evaluative insubordinate constructions from other formally similar constructions in the language. In addition, we show that the constructional status can be used as a test for insubordinate status, as an insubordinate construction pairs a ‘subordinate' form with a non-compositional meaning.
Journal: Journal of Pragmatics
ISSN: 0378-2166
Volume: 115
Pages: 21 - 36
Publication year:2017
BOF-keylabel:yes
IOF-keylabel:yes
BOF-publication weight:1
CSS-citation score:2
Authors from:Higher Education
Accessibility:Closed