36.3308, Confs: Seminar at the 2026 ESSE Conference: The English Verb: Driving Syntax, Shaping Meaning and Framing Thought (Spain)

Thu Oct 30 12:05:02 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3308. Thu Oct 30 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3308, Confs: Seminar at the 2026 ESSE Conference: The English Verb: Driving Syntax, Shaping Meaning and Framing Thought (Spain)

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Date: 29-Oct-2025
From: Frančiška Lipovšek [franciska.lipovsek at ff.uni-lj.si]
Subject: Seminar at the 2026 ESSE Conference: The English Verb: Driving Syntax, Shaping Meaning and Framing Thought

Seminar at the 2026 ESSE Conference: The English Verb: Driving Syntax,
Shaping Meaning and Framing Thought

Date: 31-Aug-2026 - 04-Sep-2026
Location: Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Contact: Frančiška Lipovšek
Contact Email: franciska.lipovsek at ff.uni-lj.si
Meeting URL: https://www.esse2026.com/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Submission Deadline: 31-Jan-2026

18th European Society for the Study of English Conference, University
of Santiago de Compostela
Seminar #7: The English Verb: Driving Syntax, Shaping Meaning and
Framing Thought
Verbs are traditionally seen as the backbone of sentence structure,
with their semantic requirements establishing syntactic relations
between arguments. However, this fundamental role extends beyond
clause-level relations, reaching into discourse, giving rise to
various implicatures and shaping idiomatic use.
The proposed seminar welcomes contributions that explore the
multifaceted nature of the English verb from a variety of linguistic
perspectives. We encourage submissions covering topics related to
English verbs, including but not limited to:
 - The verb as a structural link: How verbs govern sentence structure,
connect arguments, and shape syntactic configurations across
languages.
 - Discourse and pragmatic perspectives: How verbs structure discourse
and trigger inferences and implicatures.
 - Verb semantics: How verbs are analysed in semantics, for example in
relation to grammatical (e.g., tense, aspect, modality) and lexical
categories (e.g., meaning extensions).
 - Verbs as conceptual/cognitive tools: How metaphor and other
figurative language phenomena emerge from verbal structures.
 - Verbs as multimodal triggers: How verbs align with the use of
multimodal expressions (gestures, facial expressions, etc.) or how
their meaning is expressed visually (e.g., in cartoons).
 - Verbs as pivotal elements in language acquisition: How verbs may
contribute to the acquisition of structural patterns and their meaning
in both L1 and L2.
 - Cross-linguistic and typological perspectives: How English and
other languages categorize and structure verbs.
The seminar accepts theoretical and empirical studies that explore the
properties of English verbs from multiple perspectives. Contributions
from different linguistic frameworks such as, but not limited to,
generative grammar, cognitive linguistics, functional approaches,
construction grammar, corpus linguistics and (critical) discourse
analysis are warmly welcome.
Convenors:
Maarten Lemmens (University of Lille, France)
maarten.lemmens at univ-lille.fr
Frančiška Lipovšek (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
franciska.lipovsek at ff.uni-lj.si
Please submit your abstract (max. 300 words, excluding references) to
the two convenors (maarten.lemmens at univ-lille.fr,
franciska.lipovsek at ff.uni-lj.si) by 31 January 2026.
Selected Bibliography:
Bohnemeyer, Jürgen, and Eric Pederson (eds.). 2011. Event
representation in language and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Fairclough, Norman. 2014. Critical Language Awareness. London:
Routledge.
Filip, Hana. 2022. Aspect, Eventuality Types and Noun Phrase
Semantics. Series: Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics (series
editor Larry Horn). New York and London: Routledge (Taylor & Francis
Group).
Goldberg, Adèle E., Devin M. Casenhiser, and Nitya Sethuraman. 2004.
“Learning argument structure generalizations.” Cognitive Linguistics
15/3, 289-316.
Lemmens, Maarten. 2006. “More on objectless transitives and
ergativization patterns in English.” Constructions, April.
https://doi.org/10.24338/cons-447.
Lemmens, Maarten. 2021. Usage-based Perspectives on Lexical and
Constructional Semantics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language
Education Press.
Lenardič, Jakob, and Gašper Ilc. 2019. “English raising predicates and
(non-)finite clauses : diachronic and synchronic perspectives.”
Fluminensia : časopis za filološka istraživanja 31/1: 31-59.
https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=325695.
Levin, Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations: A
Preliminary Investigation. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press.
Lipovšek, Frančiška, Ilc, Gašper, and Andrej Stopar. 2024. “Gender in
human agents with verbs of animal sound emission: a corpus-based
study.” In: Book of abstracts: Minds, Networks, Narratives: 90 Years
of the Department of English, 8-9 November 2024, Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb Zagreb, Croatia, pp. 9-10.
Zagreb: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
https://angl-conf.ffzg.unizg.hr/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Book-of-abstracts.pdf.
Lipovšek, Frančiška. 2021. “The Function of Manner Adverbials in
Fictive Motion Expressions.” AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und
Amerikanistik 46/2: 31-54. https://dx.doi.org/10.2357/AAA-2021-0007.
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2008. Introducing arguments. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Stopar, Andrej. 2017. “Lexical bleaching of the verbal construction
fail to x : a contrastive corpus-based study.” Jezikoslovlje 18/1:
125-144.
https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=275950.
Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press.
Tannen, Deborah. 2007. Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and
imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

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