In this master thesis, the phenomenon of insubordination will be treated. This phenomenon has been described by Evans (2007:367) for the first time as “the conventionalized main-clause of what, on...Show moreIn this master thesis, the phenomenon of insubordination will be treated. This phenomenon has been described by Evans (2007:367) for the first time as “the conventionalized main-clause of what, on prima facie grounds, appear to be formally subordinate clauses”. Although this phenomenon has been defined several times in prescriptive grammars, Evans (2007) was the first who has done descriptive research for many Indo-European languages, including Dutch. Unfortunately the French language has not been described. Therefore the main subject of this MA thesis will be to compare the theory of Evans (2007) for the Dutch language and apply it to the French language. This thesis will be limited to the conjunctions “if” and “that” which introduce the conventionalized main-clauses. The main objective of this research will be a comparative research into the Dutch and French language, more specific into the two conjunctions “if” and “that”. The reason why those two conjunctions have been chosen is the fact that they appear most often in all the languages which have examined by Evans (2007). The methodology of this MA thesis will be comparative and theoretical. Moreover, there will be a section including some case studies. The content of the different sections will be thus: the first chapter will give an overview of all the literature concerning the phenomenon insubordination. The second chapter will be dedicated to the conjunction “if” in Dutch and French. The next chapter will be dedicated to the conjunction “that” and the fourth chapter will be showing some case studies to support my theory. The Corpus d’Orléans has provided the information for this thesis. Finally, all results will be summarized in the conclusion.Show less
