37.2378, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Evidentiality at the Syntax–semantics–pragmatics Interface in Romance and Beyond (Finland)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2378. Thu Jul 16 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2378, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Evidentiality at the Syntax–semantics–pragmatics Interface in Romance and Beyond (Finland)

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Date: 14-Jul-2026
From: José Amenós-Pons [jamenos at ucm.es]
Subject: Panel at IPC20: Evidentiality at the Syntax–semantics–pragmatics Interface in Romance and Beyond


Panel at IPC20: Evidentiality at the Syntax–semantics–pragmatics
Interface in Romance and Beyond
Short Title: IPrA 2027

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Contact: José Amenós-Pons
Contact Email: jamenos at ucm.es
Meeting URL: https://pragmatics.international/page/IPC20Helsinki

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition; Pragmatics; Semantics;
Syntax

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

In research on evidentiality, the initial focus on languages that
grammatically encode information source (Aikhenvald 2004, 2018, 2021)
has subsequently widened. Studies analysing how evidential meaning is
conveyed through the interaction of pragmatics, semantics and grammar
have become increasingly abundant (Squartini 2001, 2008, 2018;
Cornillie 2007; Albelda 2015; Cabedo and Figueras 2018), among which
Romance languages, especially French (Dendale 2022 and references
therein), have begun to gain prominence. This line of research has
contributed knowledge on how languages grammaticalize discourse-level
functions (such as illocutionary force and speaker commitment) and how
the resulting forms interact with epistemic modality, reportativity,
and inferential meaning in ways that resist reduction to any single
level of linguistic analysis. Recent work illustrates how evidential
interpretations emerge through verbal tense and aspect, copular and
pseudocopular constructions, complementiser systems, discourse
markers, impersonal structures, and perspectivisation phenomena
(Escandell-Vidal 2010, 2018a, 2022, 2024; Bermúdez 2005; Rodríguez
Ramalle 2015; Pérez-Jiménez et al. 2018). Analyses based on Relevance
Theory’s ostensive-inferential model of pragmatics offer a promising
approach to disentangling the interaction between explicit and
implicitly expressed evidentiality (Ifantidou 2001; Papafragou et al.
2007; Ünal and Papafragou 2018). Its principled framework naturally
accounts for regularities in the inferential processes leading to
utterance information-source identification.
In this panel, focusing on phenomena operating at the
syntax-semantics-pragmatics interfaces, research will be presented on
the expression of evidentiality in a range of Romance languages and
varieties, including work on contact varieties and adopting
comparative perspectives. We welcome contributions addressing the
mechanisms through which information source, speaker commitment and
perspective are conveyed in languages lacking evidential paradigms.
Theoretical debates concerning the relationship between evidentiality,
epistemic modality, subjectivisation and perspectivisation (Traugott
1995; Boye 2010; McCready 2015), as well as work on the derivation of
evidential interpretations from contextual enrichment, inferential
processes and procedural meaning (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995;
Escandell-Vidal and Leonetti 2011; de Saussure 2013) will all be
prioritised.
Thus, the panel will welcome theoretical, descriptive, corpus-based,
experimental and acquisitional contributions. Topics may include
evidential interpretations of tense and aspect (Squartini 2001;
Escandell-Vidal 2014, 2022), evidential discourse markers and
complementisers (Cornillie and Gras 2015; Demonte and Fernández
Soriano 2019), evidential effects in copular and impersonal
constructions (Escandell-Vidal 2018b; Fernández 2008), dialectal and
microparametric variation, grammaticalisation pathways,
perspectivisation in discourse, and the acquisition of evidential
strategies in first and second languages (Ahern, Amenós-Pons and
Guijarro-Fuentes 2024). Comparative studies involving Romance and
non-Romance languages are encouraged, as are studies focusing on
Romance varieties in contact with genetically and typologically
distinct languages.



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