Are root que-sentences in Portuguese as insubordinate as in Spanish?

This paper examines insubordinate que-clauses in European Portuguese (EP) and Peninsular Spanish (PS), focusing on their syntactic and discursive properties. The study presents novel data from EP, a language less studied in this context, and contributes to the Syntax/Discourse interface approach. The authors investigate various aspects of insubordination, including contexts of use, pragmatic values, and types of linguistic expressions associated with these structures. The research reveals that EP insubordinate que-clauses demonstrate less independence than their PS counterparts, maintaining a strong connection with the standard embedding que complementizer. Their discursive value is primarily inferred from situational or pragmatic contexts, often relying on anchors such as juxtaposed preceding sentences or initial interjections. The findings of this work contribute to challenge the strict distinction between syntactic and discourse relations in natural language.