Types of autonomous V-final clauses

Abstract

Abstract In German (and Dutch), main clauses and dependent clauses differ clearly with respect to form. Main clauses are always V2 and autonomous (with speech act status) while dependent ones are verb-final/VL (V-last) and nonautonomous (without speech act status). This paper is about autonomous clauses with the form of dependent clauses (i.e. VL-form, also captured in the literature under the term insubordinate subordination, coined by Evans, Nicholas. 2007. Insubordination and its uses. In Irina Nikolaeva (ed.), Finiteness: Theoretical and empirical foundations, 366–431. Oxford: Oxford University Press). In the recent literature, it has been argued that in order to explain the occurrence of autonomous dependent clauses in the historical development of German, the introducing main clause fell elliptically leaving behind a dependent form with autonomous status. The present paper argues that this account is false. Dependent forms can exist independently. Since speech act autonomy of dependent forms exists with certain (albeit not all) complementizers, a special account is provided. It is argued that this development typical of modern German, matches with the tendency toward an illocutionary semantics in its own right. Parallels for the latter path of grammaticalization are drawn from several languages other than German. The importance of the concerns for modern generative grammar is a twofold one: first, it provides insights into how independent (autonomous), but formally dependent sentences divide into several kinds of modality that are expressed in the left sentential periphery; and, second, it shows in which ways speaker-perspective is grammaticalized.