This article presents an analysis of autonomous and semi-autonomous subordination patterns in Dutch, some of which have so far gone unnoticed. It proposes a four-way classification of such constructions with the general subordinator dat ('that'), drawing on Internet Relay Chat corpus data of Flemish varieties. Generalizing over the four types and their various subtypes distinguished here, we find that they all share the semantic property of expressing interpersonal meaning, and most of them also have exclamative illocutionary force. We propose a diachronic explanation for this shared semantic pragmatic value in terms of the concept of hypoanalysis, and assess to what extent our proposal meshes with extant ellipsis accounts of the patterns studied. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.