36.2631, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2026: Subordination and Coordination in Language-contact Situations (Germany)

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Subject: 36.2631, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2026: Subordination and Coordination in Language-contact Situations (Germany)

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Date: 03-Sep-2025
From: Tom Bossuyt [tom.bossuyt at ugent.be]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2026: Subordination and Coordination in Language-contact Situations


Workshop at SLE 2026: Subordination and Coordination in
Language-contact Situations

Date: 26-Aug-2026 - 29-Aug-2026
Location: Osnabrück, Germany
Contact: Anna Kisiel
Contact Email: sle.cm at kuleuven.be
Meeting URL: https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2026/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Typology

Submission Deadline: 10-Nov-2025

Convenors: Jesús Olguín Martínez (University of Hong Kong), Thomas
Stolz (University of Bremen), Nataliya Levkovych (University of
Bremen), and Tom Bossuyt (Ghent University/University of Texas at
Austin)
Keywords: subordination, coordination, clause combining, language
contact, typology.
Description:
It is well-known that language contact is one of the most important
drivers in language change and linguistic diversity worldwide (Mithun
2025). Because most humans speak or are exposed to more than one
language in their lifetime, contact phenomena are ubiquitous in
languages around the world.
Subordinating and coordinating conjunctions are among the grammatical
elements that are especially susceptible to being borrowed (Matras
2007: 54). For example, many indigenous languages of Mesoamerica and
South America have borrowed subordinators and coordinators from
Spanish or Portuguese (Mithun 2012; Stolz & Stolz 1996a, 1996b).
Similarly, based on a sample of 137 languages spoken within the former
Soviet Union, Stolz & Levkovych (2022) report widespread borrowing of
conjunctions from Arabic, Persian, and Russian. In Italy, several
non-Romance varieties have also borrowed conjunctions from Italian
(Levkovych 2025).
Loan conjunctions have mostly been analyzed through the lens of
borrowing hierarchies. A widely cited example is Matras’s (2007:
54–56) proposed hierarchy which suggests that adverbial subordinators
marking causal, concessive, conditional, or purposive relations are
more often borrowed than others, such as temporal subordinators. As
for coordinators, an implicational hierarchy has been put forward by
Matras (1998: 301–305), according to which adversative ‘but’
coordinators are more easily borrowed than disjunctive ‘or’ and
conjunctive ‘and’ coordinators. This reflects a broader trend in
language contact research, where the borrowing of grammatical elements
is examined not just in terms of frequency, but also through the
functional and semantic properties that influence their likelihood of
transfer. Other studies of borrowed conjunctions are concerned with
their phonological adaptation. Both the form and meaning of
subordinators and coordinators may be replicated in the other language
relatively intact (see Olguín Martínez 2023 for a number of examples
in Mesoamerican languages). However, there are cases in which the
forms of subordinators and coordinators are adjusted to some degree to
fit the phonological structure of the recipient language. The
mechanisms by which subordinators and coordinators are adapted are
complex and have been the subject of much research and debate.
While the studies mentioned above have advanced our theoretical and
typological understanding of subordination and coordination in
language contact situations, much more work remains to be done in this
field.
Aims of the Workshop:
The workshop will bring together original research that contributes to
our understanding of subordination and coordination in
language-contact situations. We welcome contributions on any given
language, family, or macro-area, as well as broad typological studies.
The workshop will pave the way for the analysis of understudied
aspects of subordination and coordination in language-contact
situations. Potential contributions include, but are by no means
restricted to, the following:
1. Hybrid constructions. In language-contact situations, there are
cases in which loan conjunctions and autochthonous strategies of
subordination may not only coexist as competitors but also combine to
give rise to typologically unpredictable hybrid constructions (Stolz &
Levkovych, submitted). For instance, there are cases in which
adverbial clauses may appear with an autochthonous subordinator while
main clauses occur with a borrowed coordinator (see Olguin Martinez
2022 for a number of examples in Mesoamerican languages). This
phenomenon has been described by Bertinetto & Ciucci (2012) as
“para-hypotaxis”. The authors propose the following scheme:
subordinator + dependent clause + coordinator + main clause. The
questions are: Are hybrid constructions transitory stages of a process
that ultimately leads to a structural readjustment? Do hybrid
constructions arise more often with certain logical or temporal
relations than in other contexts? Can hybrid constructions be
described as (sometimes discontinuous) unitary constructions?
2. Beyond loan conjunctions. Recent studies have shown that recipient
languages may not only borrow conjunctions from a donor language, but
also adopt additional properties of the source construction in which
such conjunctions occur, including lexical preferences, such as the
range of verb lemmas appearing in a given constructions, and the
discourse-pragmatic and conversational functions (Olguín Martínez
2024a; Olguín Martínez & Gries, in press). These findings align with
recent Usage-Based Construction Grammar approaches that emphasize the
need for an integrative, non-modular perspective on language contact
(e.g., Boas & Höder 2018, 2021). This raises several important
questions: Why do speakers of recipient languages not only borrow
conjunctions, but also broader constructional features of complex
sentences? What socio-cognitive factors shape these patterns of
borrowing and adaptation in contact scenarios? What statistical or
quantitative methods can be employed to analyze such multifaceted
linguistic phenomena?
3. Discourse narrowing and widening. From a discourse-pragmatic
perspective, loan conjunctions sometimes cover a different functional
load than their source. Their function in the recipient language may
be narrower, broader or entirely different from the corresponding
marker in the donor language (Matras 2020: 160–161; Mithun 2025:
471–472; Olguín Martínez 2024b, in press). The questions are: What are
the ranges of factors that contribute to the processes of discourse
narrowing and widening? How do patterns of discourse narrowing and
widening differ across different types of language contact scenarios?
Are certain types of clause-linking devices (e.g., causal, temporal,
conditional) more prone to discourse narrowing or widening in language
contact situations?
Please send provisional abstracts of no more than 300 words (excluding
references) in PDF format by November 10, 2025 to:
jfolguinmartinez at gmail.com
stolz at uni-bremen.de
levkov at uni-bremen.de
tom.bossuyt at ugent.be
If the workshop is approved, authors will be asked to submit revised
500-word abstracts according to the SLE guidelines
References:
Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Luca Ciucci. 2012. Parataxis, hypotaxis and
para-hypotaxis in the Zamucoan languages. Linguistic Discovery 10.
89-111.
Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Höder (eds.) (2018). Constructions in contact:
Constructional perspectives on contact phenomena in Germanic
languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Höder. 2021. Widening the scope: Recent trends
in Constructional Contact Linguistics. In Hans C. Boas & Steffen Höder
(eds.), Constructions in contact 2: Language change, multilingual
practices, and additional language acquisition, 2-13. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Levkovych, Nataliya. 2025. Italian loan conjunctions in the
alloglottic non-Romance languages of Italy. Language Typology and
Universals–STUF.
Matras, Yaron. 1998. Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical
borrowing. Linguistics 36. 281-331.
Matras, Yaron. 2007. The borrowability of structural categories. In
Yaron Matras & Jeanette Sakel (eds), Grammatical borrowing in
cross-linguistic perspective, 31-73. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Matras, Yaron. 2020. Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Mithun, Marianne. 2012. Exuberant complexity: The interplay of
morphology, syntax and prosody in Central Alaskan Yupʼik. Linguistic
Discovery 10. 5-26.
Mithun, Marianne. 2025. Constructions and language contact. In Mirjam
Fried & Kiki Nikiforidou (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of
Construction Grammar, 469-496. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2022. Contact-induced language change: The
case of Mixtec adverbial clauses. Journal of Language Contact 15.
1-70.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2023. Areality of clause-linkage: The
consecutive construction in Mesoamerican languages. Voprosy
Jazykoznanija (‘Topics in the Study of Language’) 3. 122-142.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2024a. ‘Until’ clauses and expletive negation
in Huasteca Nahuatl. Studies in Language 48. 753-780.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2024b. Semantically negative clause-linkage:
‘Let alone’ constructions, expletive negation, and theoretical
implications. Linguistic Typology 28. 1-52.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. In press. Exceptive constructions in Huasteca
Nahuatl: On the interaction of syntax and discourse in language use.
Studies in Language.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Stefan Th. Gries. In press.
Similative-pretence constructions in language contact situations: A
Usage-Based Construction Grammar perspective. Cognitive Linguistic
Studies.
Sakel, Jeanette. 2007. Mosetén borrowing from Spanish. In Yaron Matras
& Jeanette Sakel (eds), Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic
perspective, 567-580. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Stolz, Christel & Thomas Stolz. 1996a. Funktionswortentlehnung in
Mesoamerika: Spanisch-amerindischer Sprachkontakt. STUF - Language
Typology and Universals 49. 86–123.
Stolz, Christel & Thomas Stolz. 1996b. Transpazifische
Entlehnungsisoglossen: Hispanismen in Funktionswortinventaren
beiderseits der Datumsgrenze. In Norbert Boretzky, Werner Enninger, &
Thomas Stolz (eds.), Areale, Kontakte, Dialekte. Sprache und ihre
Dynamik in mehrsprachigen Situationen: Beiträge zum 10.
Bochum-Essener-Symposium vom 30. 06.-01.07.1995 an der Universität GH
Essen, 262–291. Bochum: Universitätsverlag Brockmeyer.
Stolz, Thomas & Nataliya Levkovych. 2022. On loan conjunctions: A
comparative study with special focus on the languages of the former
Soviet Union. In Nataliya Levkovych (ed.), Susceptibility vs.
resistance: Case studies on different structural categories in
language contact situations, 259–392. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Stolz, Thomas & Nataliya Levkovych. submitted. Adverbial subordinators
and language contact. In Lukasz Jedrzejowski (ed.). On the diachrony
of adverbial clauses. Leiden, Boston: Brill De Gruyter.



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