[Lingtyp] Workshop at SLE 2026. Rethinking argument structure interactionally: Deviations from Who Does What to Whom across the languages

[Vladimir Panov]

Dear colleagues,



Maria Khachaturyan, Pavel Ozerov and Vladimir Panov (myself) are preparing
a workshop proposal for the next SLE conference, which will take place in
Osnabrück, Germany, 26 - 29 August 2026. The topic is “Rethinking argument
structure interactionally: Deviations from *Who Does What to Whom* across
the languages”.  Please find the Call for Papers below. We look forward to
receiving your 300-word abstract by 10 November 2025.

Best,

Vladimir, Maria and Pavel

*** Call for Papers below ***

Workshop at SLE 2026: Rethinking argument structure interactionally:
Deviations from *Who Does What to Whom* across the languages

*Convenors:*

Vladimir Panov: Vilnius University (vladimir.panov at flf.vu.lt)

Maria Khachaturyan: CNRS; University of Helsinki (
maria.khachaturyan at helsinki.fi )

Pavel Ozerov: University of Innsbruck (pavel.ozerov at uibk.ac.at).

*Presentation*

The goal of this workshop is to lay the groundwork for an
utterance/TCU-oriented typology. Departing from the traditional
clause-based model of cross-linguistic variation, we aim to uncover the
fundamental syntactic patterns of spoken discourse and the typological
variation in this domain.

Traditionally, linguistics has emphasized clausal structures and sentences,
commonly defined as structures with a predicate and its arguments. Such
structures typically express a proposition, a description of an event that
addresses the question of *Who does what to whom. * Although a definition
of the basic notions of clause and sentence is known to be problematic
under close scrutiny (e.g. de Beaugrande 1999), clause-based argument
structure is the traditional domain of theoretical and typological inquiry
of syntax. Such a view is reflected throughout linguistic literature, as is
illustrated in (1):

(1)*       I wrote a long letter* (Croft 2022: 32)

Despite the massive shift to usage-based models in current linguistic
thinking, the clause/sentence-based view of grammar persists nearly
unchallenged.  Distributional typology, which has gained popularity in
recent years, significantly reformulates the discipline’s goals as asking
and answering the questions *what’s where why*. However, it remains rather
traditional in its focus on *Who does what to whom* structures. This stance
is evident, for example, in recent discussions on the forces that shape
case-marking systems cross-linguistically: “In utterances with an agent (A)
and a patient (P)—for example, *Henry kissed Mark*—languages need to signal
which argument maps onto which role.” (Shcherbakova et al. 2024: 7259).
Similarly, cognitive experimental approaches operate within the
sentence-planning and comprehension paradigm, with the requirement to
produce a full clause as a response to a stimulus (e.g. Nordlinger,
Rodriguez and Kidd 2022:195).

By contrast, conversation analysis and its daughter approach, interactional
linguistics, have focused on the structures of spoken language in
face-to-face interactions. In this tradition, it has long been known that
units of spoken interaction, such as (the lexical content of) intonation
units (IUs) and turn construction units (TCUs), can constitute locally
sufficient contributions, without forming a clause in the traditional
sense. The panoply of such structures and the phenomena they represent is
broad. This includes, for example, incremental planning and delivery. While
the incremental view is in line with current clause-based approaches to
planning (cf. again Nordlinger, Rodriguez and Kidd 2022 above), in the
interactional view chunks that do not evolve into a clausal structure form
nonetheless part of the overall larger structure. A different type of a
phenomenon are structures that conventionally convey information without
having a clausal structure. This, for instance, includes detached NPs used
for such tasks as shifting attention to a referent, assessments,
exclamations, requests or narration (Sorjonen and Raevaara 2014, Helasvuo
2019, Izre’el  2018). Some additional well-known cases of non-clausal
constructions with heavy interactional load and designated functions are
vocatives (Sonnenhauser and Noel Aziz Hanna 2013) and interjections
(Dingemanse 2024). Taking a non-clausal analysis of such structures
seriously leads to further theoretical questions, such as the clausal
nature of stand-alone verbs and the notion of “omittable arguments” in
“radical pro-drop” languages. Is reconstructing a clause in such cases
justifiable, or is it parallel to reconstructing, for instance, “an omitted
temporal adverbial” where the temporal reference is established from the
context (as potentially is the case in (1)). Finally, there is an also
widespread family of mirror-image phenomena where syntactic structures
conventionally go beyond expressing aspects of the reported event and
involve aspects of the speech act and its sociopragmatic settings (such as
allocutivity (Antonov 2015)).

Unfortunately, interactional linguistics and typologically informed
usage-based linguistics continue to exist in parallel universes. There are
very few studies that seriously ask how “clausal” spoken languages actually
are. Notable attempts to bridge the gap originating in interactionally
informed approaches, are yet to make an impact on theoretical linguistics
and typology. For example, Laury, Ono & Suzuki (2019) show that Finnish and
Japanese differ significantly with respect to argument expression and,
consequently, the proximity to the *who-does-what-to-whom *prototype. While
Finnish speakers most often express at least one “argument” overtly (and
the predicate is obligatory marked for subject), Japanese speakers seem to
orient to predicate-only TCUs (cf. also the contributions to special issues
of *Studies in Language *2019 and *Languages 2025* edited by Laury and Ono
on this topic). Yet, to this day, the dialogue between interactional
approaches, general linguistics, usage-based theories, and typology is
minimal. Moreover, the coverage of this research has been rather narrow,
with much of the work concentrating on the same language choice. Building
upon the seminal work of Ono, Laury and others, we aim to collect new
cross-linguistic evidence and develop further the attempt to situate the
problem of adequacy of clause- and argument structure-based thinking at the
core of the general linguistic discussion.

The aim of the workshop is thus an attempt to discuss and determine what
components basic units of natural spoken discourse consist of, and how
languages differ in this respect. We are particularly interested in
deviations from prototypical clausal structures (predicate + arguments).
These deviations can be classified into two main types: (1) “omission” or
non-marking of typical arguments (A, S, P, R, etc.) and (2) addition (more
or less obligatory) of non-canonical referential phrases: topics, other
detached noun phrases, address forms, etc. Some of these deviations have
been discussed in the literature., e.g.:

-        Prevalence of predicate-only structures, e.g. Japanese (Laury, Ono
& Suzuki 2019),

-        Prevalence of structures based on referential structures with no
overt syntactic relations to the rest of the utterance (“topic-prominent
languages” Li & Thompson 1976, Left Dislocations (Ozerov 2024) and more)

-     Non-specification or underspecification of thematic roles of the
referents, e.g. Riau Indonesian (Gil 2004; Gil & Shen 2019),

-        Addressee prominence: allocutivity, e.g. Basque and Korean
(Antonov 2013, 2015), and familiarizers (Kleinknecht & Souza 2017),

-        Obligatory indexation of the speech situation, such as avoidance
speech, e.g., the mother-in-law speech style in Dyirbal (Dixon 2015).

-        Other quasi-obligatory pragmatic marking, e.g., through final
particles
in East Asia (Panov 2020)

-     The “online syntax” approach (Hopper 1987; Auer 2015) arguing that
typical clauses emerge in the incremental production of utterances.

*Research questions*

This workshop invites contributions that ask and answer the following
questions using concrete, language-specific and cross-linguistic data:

-        How do naturally occurring units of interaction in individual
languages differ from the clausal prototype “predicate + arguments” (*who
does what to whom*)?

-        What types of frequent or obligatory, free or bound referential
phrases do occur beyond the standard semantic types of arguments (S, A, P,
T, R)?

-        How much non-specification of thematic roles can be found
cross-linguistically?

-        Are there any areal or genealogical clines in utterance types that
do not fit the clausal prototype?

-        Is propositional content and indexing of the speech event features
a binary opposition or a continuum?

-        Which alternative models of syntax can account for utterances that
are not prototypical clauses? What can we benefit from applying these
models to clausal patterns?

Please send provisional abstracts of no more than 300 words (excluding
references) in PDF format by November 10, 2025 to any of the convenors:

Vladimir Panov: vladimir.panov at flf.vu.lt

Maria Khachaturyan: maria.khachaturyan at helsinki.fi

Pavel Ozerov:  pavel.ozerov at uibk.ac.at



*References*

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Antonov, Anton. 2015. Verbal allocutivity in a crosslinguistic
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Auer, Peter. 2015. The temporality of language in interaction: projection
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De Beaugrande, R., 1999. Sentence first, verdict afterwards: On the
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Croft, William. 2022.  *Morphosyntax: Constructions of the World’s
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Dingemanse, Mark. 2024. Interjections at the heart of language. *Annual
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Dixon, R. M. W. 2015. *Edible Gender, Mother-in-Law Style, and Other
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Gil, David. 2004.: Riau Indonesian Sama: Explorations in
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