That it should have come to this! The challenging phenomenon of insubordination

That it should have come to this! The challenging phenomenon of insubordination

Daniela Schröder

University of Hamburg

CSI Lisbon

May 7th, 2014

Contents

• Introduction

• Background of the study

• Statement of the problem

• Previous Research

• Purpose of the study

• Research Questions and Methodology

• First findings

13.10.2014 2 Daniela Schröder

Insubordination

• Constructions that display the formal features of a subordinate clause (such as subordinating word order, use of conjunctions etc.), but occur in a conventionalized main clause use.

• A particular sentence pattern is disobedient to its originally assigned grammatical (syntactical) function.


Examples

• isolated if-clauses: “If you could wash your hands.”

• How-exclamatives: “How they can bet on a bloody dog like that!” “How beautiful she is!”

• That-exclamatives: “That I should live to see this!”

• What + a-exclamatives: “What a nerd he is!”

Maybe more?

The things she says! [annoy me].

What books she reads! [surprises me?].

If only you would leave! [???]


Other Languages

• German: – Dass ich das noch erleben darf! [That I should live to see this!]

– Wenn du doch nur gingest! [If only you would leave!]

– Wie schön sie ist! [How beautiful she is!]

• Spanish: – ¡Como yo le apriete! [How I squeeze him!]

– ¡Que tan buenos somos para ella! [How good we are for her!]

• Dutch:

– Dat hij maar niet zeeziek wordt. [I hope he doesn’t get seasick.] (van Verstraete et. al. 2012: 127)

13.10.2014 Daniela Schröder 5

Status of these constructions

Are they

Incomplete utterances which are dependent on a matrix clause/predicate?

Complete sentences with „just“ a different form?

An independent sentence type?

Some sort of „hybrid“?


Statement of the problem

• Insubordination has only been marginally treated in linguistics

• If it is treated, these constructions are labelled incomplete (Quirk et al. 1985) or abbreviated (Jespersen 1949) sentences

• Insubordination questions the traditional view of grammar, which divides sentences into main and subordinated ones (or dependent/independent ones)


Contd...

• hard to integrate into current grammar theories

• insubordinated clauses touch on the issue of ellipsis

• serious problems for the notion of unidirectionality in grammatical change degrammaticalization?


Previous research

• Evans (1993, 2007): theoretical approach about how insubordination diachronically developed by looking at a range of different languages (mostly Australian ones), all of which show insubordinating structures.


History (Evans 2007)

Conventionalized main clause

Reconstruction not necessary, full

ellipsis

Ellipsis of matrix clause, any

compatible main clause may be reconstructed

Full construction (matrix +

dependent clause)


Contradicting research

• Mithun (2005,2008): looked at Navajo and Yup‘ik. Dependency is extended beyond the sentence level. Dependency ≠ subordination. Rejects Evans‘ (2007) account, matrix clause is not needed, it might never have existed.


Dutch

• van Verstraete et. al. (2012): seven typologically distinct construction types of insubordination, which are based on three different semantic domains (deontic, evaluative and discursive).

• These structures have separate developmental trajectories.


Research Summary

Insubordinated clauses are claimed

– to have arisen from ellipsis (disputed!)

– to be prosodically complete

– to state an illocutionary act

– to be a feature of spoken discourse

– To be used as exclamatives, rogatives, optatives...

– To show dependency on matrix clauses/matrix predicates/previous discourse


Problem

• Almost all of the previous research on insubordination is not based on actual data.

• Differing concepts of subordination, dependency and independency

– Differing definitions of insubordination


Current study

• Contribute authentic language data to the discussion and provide a solid quantative analysis

• Provide a detailed case study, comparing historical data with current one (English)

• To test proposed hypotheses


Research Questions

1) Is there a noticeable, i.e. statistically significant increase in frequency of these structures? If yes, why and when did it start? How can we account for this development? 2) Are there structures that are more prone to occur in insubordinated clauses than others? Why is that and which factors influence this? 3) What conclusions about ellipsis can we draw from the phenomenon of insubordination? 4) What does insubordination mean for a theory of grammar?


Methodology

• Corpus study

• Comparing historical data with present day data.


Corpora

• Historical Corpora:

• Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 (1.2 million words)

• Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (1710-1920) (15 million words)

• Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (2.1 million words)

• Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English

• KEMPE Corpus

• Present Day Corpora:

• British National Corpus (BNC) (100 million words)

• Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)


Corpora

Insubordination: Any construction where a possible matrix clause can be reconstructed

Examples:

– „That I should live to see this!“ (amazes me)

– (I can‘t believe) „How they can bet on a bloody dog like that!“

– (You wouldn‘t like) „How much she hates that woman!“


Corpus Search

• All corpora are POS tagged.

• Search algorithms: „How + personal pronoun/proper name“ „How + adjective/adverb“ etc.

• „Canonical“ main clause word order (i.e. no reversal)

– Questionable for historical data!


• “but,alas! what a thing is any paper! What fine remarks can you not hang on mine!” (CoLaTe

3_0_3_267)

– ??[You would not believe] what a thing is any paper! ??

• Finite verb must be present

– *(^Mrs. Seal.^): With all that Wit, and Learning, how considerate! (CEED D5CSTEEL)


Research Question 1

1) Is there a noticeable, i.e. statistically significant increase in frequency of these structures? If yes, why and when did it start?

p = 0,52 not significant!


0

0,5

1

1,5

2

CEEC (1410-1695) CEED (1560-1760) CoLaTe (1710-1920) BNC (1960-1993)

Occ

urr

en

ces

pe

r 1

0,0

00

wo

rds

Corpora

Insubordinated structures


0

0,02

0,04

0,06

0,08

0,1

0,12

0,14

0,16

1500-1570 1570-1640 1640-1710 1710-1780 1780-1850 1850-1920 1960-1993

Occ

urr

en

ce p

er

10

,00

0 w

ord

s

Years of occurrence

Insubordination

p = 0,99 not significant!

Research Question 2


• Are there structures that are more prone to occur in insubordinated clauses that others?

• 𝑝 < 0,001, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝜑 = 0,00011

0

0,2

0,4

0,6

0,8

CEEC (1410-1695) CEED (1560-1760) CoLaTe (1710-1920) BNC (1960-1993)

Occ

urr

en

ces

pe

r 1

0,0

00

wo

rds

Corpora

How + PNP How + ADJ/ADV what a

Spoken vs written


0

0,2

0,4

0,6

0,8

1

1,2

1,4

1,6

1,8

2

Written Spoken

Occ

urr

en

ces

pe

r 1

0,0

00

wo

rds

all c

orp

ora

Genre

𝑝 = 0,46 → 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑡

Examples

• How it rankles, that one small experience; that journey from Cape Gata to Zacco‘s succouring arms! [BNC BP0]

• God, how I hate that woman. [BNC G15]

• O my beloved creature, how you terrify me! (CoLaEnTe 3_0_1_9, 1710-1780)

• Heavens! how you women do fly round! My head's in a whirl. (CoLaEnTe 3_0_3_320, 1850-1920)


Summary: Findings

• So far, no significant increase in these strutcures over time

• Unclear whether some constructions are more likely to occur insubordinated (significance, but no effect)

• No measurable difference between spoken and written language


Other findings

• „That + personal pronoun“, though often cited as an example, does empirically almost never occur (~ 0,08 times per million words in the BNC)

• No occurrences in the historical data


Conclusion

• Genre analysis necessary! a feature of narrative fiction?

• More refined statistical methods

• Mostly exclamatory force exclamative as a (semantic?) sentence type, independent of form?

• Subordination not strictly syntactic, insubordination neither


References

• Buscha, Annerose (1976): „Isolierte Nebensätze im dialogischen Text“ Deutsch als Fremdsprache 13, 274–279

• Evans, Nicolas (1993): „Code, inference, placedness and ellipsis” In: Foley, William A. (ed.) The Role of Theory in Language Description, 243–280

• Evans, Nicolas (2007): „Insubordination and ist uses“ In: Nikolaeva, Irina (ed.) Finiteness. Theoretical and Empirical Foundations,366–431

• Mithun, Marianne (2008): „The Extension of Dependency beyond the Sentence” Language 84 (1), 69–119

• Oppenrieder, Wilhelm (1989): „Selbständige Verb-Letzt-Sätze: ihr Platz im Satzmodussystem und ihre Intonatorische Kennzeichnung“ In: Altmann, Hans Anton Batliner und Wilhelm Oppenrieder (eds.) Zur Intonation von Modus und Fokus im Deutschen. Tübingen: May Niemeyer Verlag, 163–244

• Stirling, Lesley (1999): „Isolated if-clauses in Australian English”. In: Collins, Peter and David Lee (eds.): The Clause in English. In honour of Rodney Huddleston. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 273–294

• van Verstraete, Jean-Christoph, Sarah D'Hertefelt and An van linden (2012): „A typology of complement insubordination in Dutch” Studies in Language 36 (1), 123–153.


That it should have come to this! The challenging phenomenon of insubordination

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