Subordination with exclamative interpretation in Russian

The paper discusses Russian complex sentences with wh-words kakoj, skol’ko and kto in subordinate clauses, which have exclamative interpretations. On the basis of joint frequency distribution of matrix predicates and subordinate clauses in the Russian National Corpus, the paper presents evidence for the insubordination hypothesis. With respect to exclamatives, this hypothesis comprises the idea that matrix exclamatives emerged via desubordination of subordinate interrogative clauses. To summarise, the paper supports the view that the phenomenon of subordinate exclamatives is questionable, at least in Russian.