Running in the family: Patterns of complement insubordination in Germanic

This chapter provides a survey of insubordination patterns (as defined by Evans 2007) in five Germanic languages, Dutch, German, English, Swedish and Danish. The analysis focuses on a type of insubordination that is productive in many Germanic languages, viz. insubordinate complement clauses, introduced by dat (Dutch), dass (German), that (English), att (Swedish) and at (Danish). From a descriptive perspective, we try to identify the full constructional range of complement insubordination in each language, and we compare this range across the five languages. From a theoretical perspective, we use these data to assess the constructional status of insubordinate clauses, their development, and the boundaries of the concept, particularly with respect to discourse-structuring or elaborative uses. We round off by providing an overall functional characterization of insubordination that draws on functional work on subordination.