36.2838, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2026: The Interfaces of the Afroasiatic Verb (Germany)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2838. Mon Sep 22 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 36.2838, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2026: The Interfaces of the Afroasiatic Verb (Germany)
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Date: 22-Sep-2025
From: Iris Kamil [iris.kamil at mail.huji.ac.il]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2026: The Interfaces of the Afroasiatic Verb
Workshop at SLE 2026: The Interfaces of the Afroasiatic Verb
Short Title: SLE 59
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; Historical Linguistics;
Morphology; Semantics; Syntax
Language Family(ies): Afroasiatic
Submission Deadline: 01-Nov-2025
Organisers: Iris Kamil, Letizia Cerqueglini
Call deadline: 1 November 2025
It is by now well-established that the domains of human language
rarely exist on their own: syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology,
and pragmatics regularly interact with one another on what is known as
the interfaces of grammar. The study of the various interfaces is
vast, and several frameworks of theoretical linguistic research seek
to formalize them, for instance Distributed Morphology, Halle &
Marantz 199; Parallel Architecture, Jackendoff 1997, 2002, 2007;
Magnetic Grammar, D’Alessandro & van Oostendorp 2020; Prosodic
Phonology, Nespor & Vogel 1986; i.a.
Afroasiatic (Amazigh, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian/Coptic, Omotic,
Semitic) presents a particularly fascinating case for the study of the
interfaces. Some branches, e.g., Semitic, feature a higher degree of
non-concatenative morphology and thus have less transparency on the
interacting domains, while others, e.g., Cushitic, feature a higher
degree of concatenative morphology and in effect also more
transparency on overt interface phenomena. For instance,
Voice-altering morphemes, which are shared across Afroasiatic with the
anticausative t- and n- morphemes and the causative s/h/ʾ morpheme(s),
regularly interact with a) the lexical properties of derivational
roots, b) the TAM features of derived predicates, and c) the
intentionality and agentivity domains of their subjects (Kamil &
Kilani, accepted).
To illustrate one example, the anticausative t-morpheme is found in
its classic syncretic Middle functions of reflexive, autobenefactive,
passive, and noncausal in most Afroasiatic languages (except Chadic
and Omotic). In Akkadian (East-Semitic), it has furthermore developed
pluractional meanings (e.g., in (1) below) and a function as a
progression-marker in a series of events (e.g., in (2) below). This
syncretism of Voice Morphology is not unique to Akkadian, not even to
Semitic, but is for instace found also in Amazigh (Bedar, accepted).
(1) lišān nēr-i=šu kīma birq-i i-t<tan>abriq-Ø
tongue.CSTR light-OBL=his as lightning-OBL
3-PASS<PLUR>flash.IPFV-SG.M
“Whose tongue of light flashes repeatedly like lightning” (BA
5 648:13f., NA)
(2) … a-šâm … a-šâm=u … ēzib … inanna
eql-am
… 1SG-buy.PFV … 1SG-buy.PFV=SUBJ …
1SG.leave.PFV … now field-OBL
i-b<ta>qr-Ø=an=ni
3-claim<PROG>PFV-SG.M=VEN=me
“I have bought (a plot of one field for one mina of silver
from the soldier PN. When) I bought (the plot of one field,) I left
(PN a different plot of two fields.) And now he has laid claim to
(take from) me the field. (AbB 4 38:9-13, OB)
Work dedicated to either the synchronic or diachronic encoding of
interfacial domains is rare and mostly restricted to formal studies on
Semitic (see for instance Doron 2003, Kastner 2020, Cerqueglini 2021,
Kamil 2025). We would thus like to invite abstracts for a workshop
dedicated to such a study of the interfaces of grammar in Afroasiatic
languages. We are particularly interested in the transparency of the
overt realization of interfacing domains. Taking again the t-morpheme
as an example, while some languages express cross-domain functions
within one morpheme (e.g., Akkadian, Kabyle), others maintain a
functional and morphological separation (e.g., Cushitic).
In this context, our workshop pursues three core research questions:
1. How are the interfaces of grammar realized overtly or covertly in
Afroasiatic?
2. How does the realization of one given interface differ across
different branches and languages within branches of Afroasiatic?
3. How do interfacing relationships arise?
We welcome contributions on any interfacing domains within the
syntax-semantics-morphology-phonology-pragmatics bracket, addressing,
but not limited to, (the interaction of) the following research
topics:
- Tense and temporal reference,
- Grammatical and lexical aspect,
- Mood and modality,
- Agentivity and intentionality,
- Voice, valency, and argument structure,
- Phrasal syntax,
- Pragmatic features (e.g., evidentiality, mirativity, illocutionary
force).
Contributions may focus on one language, one branch or on the
comparison of Afroasiatic branches/languages and present data from
both written traditions and/or spoken varieties, ancient or modern. We
welcome all linguistic methodologies in order to foster a comparative
and cross-disciplinary discussion.
Please send anonymised abstracts of max. 300 words in PDF or Word
format to Iris Kamil (iris.kamil at mail.huji.ac.il) and Letizia
Cerqueglini (olimata2010 at gmail.com).
Call deadline: 1 November 2025
Bibliography:
Bedar, Amazigh. Accepted. Syncretism at the phonology-syntax
interface: a case study of the imperfective-middle-passive in Kabyle
Berber. Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics.
Cerqueglini, L. 2021. TAM in TMA: Tense-Aspect-Mood in Traditional
Muṯallaṯ Arabic. Paper Presented at SOAS, London.
D’Alessandro, R. A. G. & Marc van Oostendorp. 2020. Language Variation
and Functional Heads: Magnetic Grammar. Linguistic Analysis 42(3–4).
405–439.
Doron, Edit. 2003. Agency and voice: The semantics of the Semitic
templates. Natural language semantics 11(1). 1–67.
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023021423453.
Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the
pieces of inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.),
Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger (The View from
the Building 20), 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. The architecture of the language faculty
(Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 28). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 2002. Foundations of Language (Brain, Meaning,
Grammar, Evolution). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 2007. A Parallel Architecture perspective on language
processing. Brain Research 1146. 2–22.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2006.08.111.
Kamil, Iris. 2025. Intention, Aspect, and Argument Structure. The
Morphosyntax and Morphosemantics of the (Old Babylonian) Akkadian
Verb. University of Edinburgh PhD Thesis.
Kamil, Iris & Marwan Kilani (eds.). Accepted. Messe-t up! Studies on
the Afroasiatic Verbal t-Morpheme (Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic
Languages and Linguistics). Leiden: Brill.
Kastner, Itamar. 2020. Voice at the interfaces: The syntax, semantics
and morphology of the Hebrew verb. Berlin: Language Science Press.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3865067.
Nespor, Marina & Irene Vogel. 1986. Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht:
Foris Publications.
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