Directive conditional and complement insubordination in Germanic languages

This paper deals with independent or insubordinate conditional and complement clauses that express directive meanings. On a descriptive level, I show that a variety of directive subtypes can be distinguished for both strategies, i.e. requests and threats for the conditional constructions and orders, prohibitions, advice and permission structures for the complement constructions. On a theoretical level, this paper investigates to what extent these directive constructions are influenced by their respective “source” semantics, i.e. conditionality and complementation. I show that conditional directives share two typically conditional properties: (1) they always imply a choice between two possible scenarios and (2) they always orient towards a particular consequence. Complement directives, on the other hand, all share an anaphoric property, in the sense that they link the directive back to something that forms part of the (assumed) common ground between speaker and addressee.