[Lingtyp] Proposed SLE 2027 Workshop: Reassessing impersonality: Definitions, diagnostics, and cross-linguistic comparison

Fri Oct 16 11:41:18 UTC 2026

Dear colleagues,
Diego Luinetti and I are preparing a workshop proposal for the next SLE conference, which will take place in Košice, Slovakia, from 25 to 28 August 2027.
Our proposed workshop is entitled “Reassessing impersonality: Definitions, diagnostics, and cross-linguistic comparison.”
Please find the call for contributions below.
If you are interested in participating, please send your proposed title and a provisional abstract of no more than 100 words by 10 November 2026 to both d.luinetti at unimarconi.it<mailto:d.luinetti at unimarconi.it> and Katarzyna.janic at amu.edu.pl<mailto:Katarzyna.janic at amu.edu.pl>.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Best wishes,
Diego and Katarzyna
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Proposed SLE 2027 workshop: Reassessing impersonality: Definitions, diagnostics, and cross-linguistic comparison
Submission deadline: 10 November 2026
Convenors:
Diego Luinetti (Guglielmo Marconi University in Rome)
Katarzyna Janic (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań)
Keywords: impersonal constructions, cross-linguistic comparison, alignment patterns, non-canonical subject coding, information structure;
Research background: Impersonal constructions (ICs) have received considerable attention, particularly in Indo-European linguistics (e.g., contributions in Siewierska 2008; Bauer 2000: §3), with a strong emphasis on their diachronic development (e.g., Luinetti 2025, 2026). Since the early 2000s, phenomena traditionally associated with impersonality have also attracted interest from cross-linguistic and typological perspectives, especially in research on noncanonical argument marking (e.g., Aikhenvald et al. 2001; Seržant & Kulikov 2013; Eythórsson 2000; Sigurðardóttir & Eythórsson 2022; Barðdal 2023). Much of this research, however, has approached impersonal constructions through broader questions concerning transitivity, voice, and valency, rather than focusing explicitly on impersonality as a distinct domain of cross-linguistic comparison (but see Creissels 2007, 2024: §6; Malchukov & Ogawa 2011).
A major challenge to a systematic cross-linguistic comparison of ICs stems from differences in how they are defined (Malchukov & Siewierska 2011). These definitional difficulties become particularly apparent when contrasting structural and communicative-functional approaches to impersonality (Siewierska 2008), which emphasize its different properties and do not necessarily identify the same range of construction types.
From a structural, subject-oriented perspective, impersonals are characterized by the absence of a fully referential verbal argument, exhibiting the morphosyntactic properties associated with canonical subjects in a language (Siewierska 2008: 116). Constructions traditionally classified as impersonal on structural grounds may include those lacking canonically coded subjects, (1), those involving expletive elements, (2), and those in which canonical subject coding alternates with a non-canonical coding pattern, (3a–b).
(1)
Latin (Italic, Indo-European)
me
civitatis
morum
piget
1sg.acc
society(f).gen.sg
moral(m).gen.pl
loathe.prs.3sg
‘I loathe the morals of the society.’
lit. ‘It irks me of the morals of the society’ (Sall. Iug. 4, 9)

(2)
French (Italic, Indo-European)
Il
est
entré
une
fille
3sg.m
be.prs.3sg
enter.ptcp.pst.sg.m
idf.f.sg
girl(f).sg
‘There came in a girl.’

(3)
Polish (Slavic, Indo-European)
a.
Woda
zalała
piwnicę.

water(f).nom.sg
flood.pfv.pst.3sg.f
basement(f).acc.sg

‘The water flooded the basement.’

b.
Zalało
piwnicę
wodą.

flood.pfv.pst.3sg.n
basement(f).acc.sg
water(f).ins.sg

‘The basement got flooded.’

lit. ‘It flooded the basement with water.’

The communicative-functional approach emphasizes a different dimension of impersonality, conceptualizing it as a strategy of event construal, where agents logically involved in an event are backgrounded, defocused, or even excluded from its representation. This perspective includes, among others, constructions expressing indefinite or generalized human reference, (4) (see Siewierska 2011; Deringer et al. 2015) and impersonal passives, (5) (see Blevins 2003; Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019: 84–89).
(4)
Italian (Italic, Indo-European)
Suonano
al
campanello
ring.prs.3pl
at.def.m.sg
doorbell(m).sg
‘Someone is ringing at the doorbell.’
lit. ‘They are ringing at the doorbell.’

(5)
Turkish (Oghuz, Turkic)
Balkondan
aşağı
düşülebilir.
balcony.abl
down
fall.pass.pot.aor.3sg
‘One could fall down from the balcony.’
(adapted from Göksel & Kerslake 2005: 151)
Neither approach is, however, without methodological limitations. The structural approach offers more readily identifiable morphosyntactic diagnostics for cross-linguistic comparison, including case marking, subject agreement, expletive elements, or even the absence of an overt subject. Nevertheless, its reliance on the notion of subjecthood presents methodological challenges as the defining properties and morphosyntactic realization of subjects vary across languages. The identification of ICs thus depends on language-specific criteria rather than on a consistent set of cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics (cf. Creissels 2024: 244). This raises the broader question of whether constructions traditionally classified as impersonal on structural grounds constitute a coherent cross-linguistic category.
The communicative-functional approach, by contrast, is not constrained by structural definitions of subjecthood and thus captures a broader range of phenomena associated with impersonality. However, it is more difficult to operationalize consistently in typological research, as agent defocusing may become apparent only in a broader discourse-pragmatic context (Siewierska 2008). This context dependence complicates the development of consistent criteria for identifying and comparing impersonal constructions across languages.
A different approach to the heterogeneity of ICs is developed by Malchukov & Ogawa (2011: 42–43), who investigate the systematic relationship between their functional varieties and grammatical encoding. Using a semantic map approach, they show that different functional varieties of impersonal constructions correlate with particular coding strategies, while recurrent overlaps in these strategies reveal connections between functional domains. Their approach thus provides a way of capturing the internal organization of the impersonal domain but leaves unresolved the methodological challenges of identifying impersonal constructions on the basis of consistent cross-linguistic criteria.
Creissels (2024: §6) addresses this methodological challenge by proposing a promising definition of ICs based on the predominant alignment patterns of individual languages. He defines impersonals in terms of violations of the Obligatory Coding Principle. On this account, ICs are exceptional coding frames that lack a slot for an A-coded participant in predominantly A-aligned languages. Conversely, anti-impersonals (Lazard 1985) constitute their structural counterpart in predominantly P-aligned languages, lacking a slot for a P-coded participant. The identification of (anti-)impersonals thus depends not merely on their morphosyntactic properties but, crucially, on their exceptional departure from the predominant patterns of argument coding in a language.
This definition provides a language-independent criterion for identifying and comparing ICs across languages, but its narrower scope excludes certain constructions traditionally classified as impersonal, notably R-impersonals, characterized by indefinite or generalized reference, and constructions involving regular TAM-governed argument-coding alternations, such as Russian debitives (e.g., mne pojti ‘I should go’). A related methodological challenge concerns the distinction between exceptional violations of the Obligatory Coding Principle and systematic alignment variation (e.g. S-split). In the absence of quantitative corpus evidence, determining whether such violations are sufficiently marginal to qualify as (anti-)impersonals inevitably involves some degree of arbitrariness (Creissels 2024: 243).
Beyond the question of how ICs are defined and identified, their cross-linguistic comparison raises further issues concerning the interaction of argument-coding patterns with verb semantics, argument structure, referential interpretations, and information structure. Addressing these issues requires more systematic language-specific descriptions, which can provide an empirical basis for broader typological generalizations, particularly given that impersonal constructions may lack systematic and comprehensive treatment even within individual languages (Luinetti 2025).
The workshop has three aims.

  1.
To reassess existing definitions and diagnostics of ICs, with particular attention to their applicability across languages with different grammatical structures and alignment systems.
  2.
To investigate the interplay between argument coding, lexical semantics, argument structure, referential interpretation, and information structure, examining which properties are cross-linguistically recurrent and which are language-specific.
  3.
To bring together language-specific, comparative, and theoretically oriented studies from diverse languages and language families to identify directions for a more systematic account of impersonality within and across languages.

We invite language-specific, comparative, and typological contributions examining ICs. We especially encourage submissions focusing on non-European languages, particularly those that have received limited attention in the existing literature on ICs. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  1.
Definition of ICs: Can the absence of a canonically coded argument serve as a reliable cross-linguistic diagnostic for ICs? Are constructions excluded under narrower definitions, such as R-impersonals or TAM-governed alternations, better treated as separate comparative categories?
  2.
Lexical vs. pragmatic ICs: What governs the distribution of impersonal constructions across different predicates and contexts? Where impersonal and canonical constructions alternate, when is the choice between them semantically and pragmatically neutral (lexical ICs), and when does it carry distinct semantic or discourse-pragmatic implications (pragmatic ICs)?
  3.
ICs, argument structure and non-canonical argument marking: What distinguishes ICs from constructions involving non-canonical argument marking more generally? How are semantic roles mapped onto grammatical relations in ICs?
  4.
ICs and information structure: Can ICs be associated with sentence focus or discourse-new referents? Does this relationship hold across languages?
  5.
ICs, voice and valency: How do morphologically coded impersonals and verb-uncoded impersonals (flexivalency/lability) relate to passive constructions and other valency-changing operations?
  6.
ICs and alignment: Does the formal symmetry between impersonals found in obligatory A-coding languages and anti-impersonals found in obligatory P-coding languages extend to their functional properties, and if so, to what extent?
  7.
ICs and expletives: Are expletives genuine syntactic subjects? How do expletives    differ from referential or vague-reference subject pronouns? Which diagnostics identify subjecthood in ICs?
  8.
ICs in diachrony: How do ICs arise, change, disappear and re-appear? What recurrent pathways of change link different types of ICs?

References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. & Dixon, R.M.W. & Masayuki, Onishi (eds.). 2001. Non-canonical marking of subjects and objects. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2023. Oblique Subjects in Germanic. Their status, history and reconstruction. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bauer, Brigitte. 2000. Archaic syntax in Indo-European: The spread of transitivity in Latin and French. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. doi.org/10.1515/9783110825992<http://doi.org/10.1515/9783110825992>
Blevins, J. P. 2003. Passives and impersonals. Journal of Linguistics 39(3): 473–520.
Creissels, Denis. 2007. Impersonal and anti-impersonal constructions: a typological approach. Ms., University of Lyon.
Creissels, Denis, 2024. Transitivity, valency and voice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, doi.org/10.1093/9780198899594.001.0001<http://doi.org/10.1093/9780198899594.001.0001>
Deringer, Lisa & Gast, Volker & Haas, Florian & Rudolf, Olga. 2015. Impersonal uses of the second person singular and generalized empathy: An exploratory corpus study of English, German and Russian. In Laure Gardelle & Sandrine Sorlin (eds.), The Pragmatics of personal pronouns, 311–334. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. <https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.171.15der> https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.171.15der
Eythórsson, Thórhallur. 2000. Dative vs. nominative: Changes in quirky subjects in Icelandic. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 8: 27–44.
Göksel, Aslı & Kerslake, Celia. 2005. Turkish: A comprehensive grammar. New York: Routledge.
Lazard, Gilbert. 1985. Anti-impersonal verbs, transitivity continuum and the notion of transitivity. In Hansjakob Seiler & Gunter Brettschneider (eds.), Language invariants and mental operations, 115–123. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Luinetti, Diego, 2025. The emergence of the hoi epêlthe ptareîn impersonal construction in Ancient Greek. Journal of Historical Syntax 9(13): 1–40. doi.org/10.18148/hs/2025.v9i14.243<http://doi.org/10.18148/hs/2025.v9i14.243>
Luinetti, Diego. 2026 (forthc.). How impersonal constructions come about: A focus on the diachrony of Ancient Greek dokeî. Transaction of the Philological Society.
Malchukov, Andrej & Ogawa, Akio, 2011. Towards a typology of impersonal constructions: A semantic map approach. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective, 17–54. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124.02mal<http://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124.02mal>
Malchukov, Andrej & Siewierska, Anna. 2011. Introduction. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124<http://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124>
Malchukov, Andrej & Siewierska, Anna (eds.). 2011. Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124<http://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124>
Seržant, Ilja & Kulikov, Leonid (eds.). 2013. The Diachronic typology of non-canonical subjects. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi.org/10.1075/slcs.140<https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.140>
Siewierska, Anna, 2008. Introduction: Impersonalization from a subject-centred vs. agent-centred perspective. Transactions of the Philological Society 106(2): 115–137 [Special issue on Impersonal Constructions in Grammatical Theory, guest-edited by A. Siewierska].
Siewierska, Anna. 2011. Overlap and complementarity in reference impersonals: Man-constructions vs. third person plural-impersonals in the languages of Europe. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.) Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective, 57–90. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124.03sie<https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124.03sie>
Sigurðardóttir, Sigríður S. & Eythórsson, Thórhallur. 2022. The emergence of oblique subjects: Oblique-case substitution and shift in anticausative strategy in Modern Icelandic. Working Parpers in Scandinavian Syntax 107: 47–82.
Zúñiga, Fernando & Seppo Kittilä. 2019. Grammatical voice. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP. doi.org/10.1017/9781316671399<http://doi.org/10.1017/9781316671399>

----------------------------------------
Assistant Professor
Adam Mickiewicz University
Institute of Oriental Studies
ul. Grunwaldzka 6
60-780 Poznań

Office: 054
Tel: (+48) 618 292 918

Homepage<https://katjan21-personal.web.amu.edu.pl/> | P-demotion database<https://katjan21.web.amu.edu.pl/728-2/>

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