37.2761, Confs: Theme Session at Grammar and Corpora 2027: Nonverbal Predicates in Spontaneous Oral Discourse (Germany)

Thu Aug 27 21:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2761. Thu Aug 27 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2761, Confs: Theme Session at Grammar and Corpora 2027: Nonverbal Predicates in Spontaneous Oral Discourse (Germany)

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Date: 26-Aug-2026
From: Katharina Haude [katharina.haude at cnrs.fr]
Subject: Theme Session at Grammar and Corpora 2027: Nonverbal Predicates in Spontaneous Oral Discourse

Theme Session at Grammar and Corpora 2027: Nonverbal Predicates in
Spontaneous Oral Discourse
Short Title: GaC 2027

Date: 30-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Düsseldorf, Germany
Contact: Katharina Haude
Contact Email: katharina.haude at cnrs.fr
Meeting URL: https://gac2027.phil.hhu.de/theme-sessions/

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis; Syntax; Typology

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

The creation of fieldwork-based corpora of spontaneous oral discourse
in lesser-known, often endangered languages over the past 25 years has
led to a wealth of empirical material for investigating the use of
grammatical patterns in actual speech (Schnell, Haig & Seifart 2021).
The proposed thematic session intends to explore such corpus data with
regard to the discourse use of nonverbal predicates in typologically
diverse languages.
In contrast to the canonical verbal predicates, which express a
referent’s involvement in an event, nonverbal predicates or “nonverbal
clause constructions” (Haspelmath 2025) express categories such as the
identity or class, property, location, or the existence of a referent
(Creissels, Bertinetto & Ciucci 2026). Different languages employ a
variety of strategies to build such constructions, both with or
without a copula. Distinctions between these constructions can
sometimes only be discovered by analyzing corpus data (see Mettouchi
2021; Haude 2021). Furthermore, investigating the discourse use of
nonverbal predicates can provide insights into grammaticalization
processes, e.g. through insubordination (see Evans 2007).
The theme session intends to bring together language experts working
with corpus data of spontaneous oral discourse, preferably (though not
necessarily) obtained through fieldwork on lesser-studied languages.
It will be investigated to what extent nonverbal constructions cluster
around particular discourse functions (e.g. introducing new discourse
referents, highlighting central statements, or delimiting larger
discourse units), and how their distribution varies across languages,
genres, and speakers. Topics to be addressed may include (but are not
restricted to) the following:
 - How frequent are (different types of) nonverbal clause
constructions in spoken discourse in comparison to verbal predicates?
 - Do nonverbal constructions help to identify larger discourse units?
 - How are the arguments of (different types of) nonverbal predicates
expressed in consecutive discourse?
 - Do different discourse genres (e.g. monologues vs. dialogues,
narrations vs. procedural texts) affect the use of nonverbal
constructions?
 - (How) are nonverbal predicates used to manipulate information
structure?
 - Can different nonverbal constructions be identified on the basis of
their discourse use?
 - Can some discourse-structuring devices in a given language be
identified as (grammaticalized) nonverbal predicates?
References:
Creissels, Denis, Pier Marco Bertinetto & Luca Ciucci. 2026.
Non-verbal predication: An analytical framework. In Pier Marco
Bertinetto, Luca Ciucci & Denis Creissels (eds.), Non-verbal
Predication in the World’s Languages: A Typological Survey.
(Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics), vol. 1: Eurasia, North
America, South America, 1–56. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
10.1515/9783110730982-001.
Evans, Nicholas. 2007. Insubordination and its uses. In Irina
Nikolaeva (ed.), Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations,
366–431. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2025. Nonverbal Clause Constructions. Language and
Linguistics Compass 19(2). e70007. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.70007.
Haude, Katharina. 2021. Clefting and nominal predication: two
focus-marking constructions in Movima. Faits de Langues 52(1).
117–138. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201006.
Mettouchi, Amina. 2021. From a corpus-based to a corpus-driven
definition of clefts in Kabyle (Berber): Morphosyntax and prosody.
Faits de Langues 52(1). 207–226.
Schnell, Stefan, Geoffrey Haig & Frank Seifart. 2021. The role of
language documentation in corpus-based typology. In Geoffrey Haig,
Stefan Schnell & Frank Seifart (eds.), Doing Corpus-Based Typology
With Spoken Language Corpora: State of the Art (LD&C Special
Publication 25). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
https://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/sp25/.

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