Semi-insubordination in Dutch and Norwegian: Grammatical, semantic and discursive properties.

Human language is a profoundly variable phenomenon which is constantly being shaped and reshaped by its use in human interaction. Linguists have always been fascinated by the emergence of new, often unusual, constructions. Even more intriguing is the question of how to account for them. This project is concerned with one such remarkable construction, known as semi-insubordination. An example from Dutch is 'misschien dat hij ook komt' (literally 'maybe that he is coming too'). For theaverage speaker of Dutch, there is nothing odd about this utterance. Yet, upon closer scrutiny, it has the puzzling property that it contains a subordinate clause, 'dat hij ook komt' ('that he is coming too'), but no main clause. Instead, the subordinateclause is headed by an adverb only: 'misschien' ('maybe'). This kind of construction is fairly widespread in several Germanic languages (among others), but it has hardly been investigated. The aim of the present project is to analyze its grammatical andfunctional properties. The project will be concerned with questions like: which elements can head this construction type, and why? Why do speakers sometimes prefer it over a simple main clause such as 'misschien komt hij ook' ('maybe he iscoming too')? Does this kind of construction convey the same meaning as a simple main clause alternative? The study will be based on synchronic corpus data from two languages that prominently feature this construction: Dutch and Norwegian.

Keywords:GERMAN LINGUISTICS, CORPUS LINGUISTICS, DOMINANCE-SUBORDINATION RELATION

Disciplines:Linguistics, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Other languages and literary studies