37.1963, Confs: Workshop at WOCAL 2027: Object Marking in African Languages and Beyond: Agreement and Clitic Doubling (Austria)

Wed Jun 3 09:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1963. Wed Jun 03 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1963, Confs: Workshop at WOCAL 2027: Object Marking in African Languages and Beyond: Agreement and Clitic Doubling (Austria)

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Date: 01-Jun-2026
From: Ekaterina Levina [agreementwocal.linguistik at univie.ac.at]
Subject: Workshop at WOCAL 2027: Object Marking in African Languages and Beyond: Agreement and Clitic Doubling

Workshop at WOCAL 2027: Object Marking in African Languages and
Beyond: Agreement and Clitic Doubling
Short Title: WOCAL 2027
Theme: Object marking in African languages and beyond: agreement and
clitic doubling

Date: 07-Jul-2027 - 10-Jul-2027
Location: Vienna, Austria
Contact: Ekaterina Levina
Contact Email: agreementwocal.linguistik at univie.ac.at
Meeting URL: https://univie.eventsair.com/cmspreview/wocal2027/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Morphology; Pragmatics;
Semantics; Syntax

Submission Deadline: 31-Jul-2026

This workshop is organized as part of the World Congress of African
Linguistics – WOCAL 12, 2027
Workshop Description:
Object marking has long been central to debates about the nature of
agreement and clitic doubling. While traditionally treated as distinct
phenomena, a growing body of work has shown that the empirical picture
is more complex and that the distinction is often difficult to
maintain (Jaeggli 1982; Borer 1984; Sportiche 1996; Roberts 2010;
Kramer 2012; Zeller 2015; Dierks, Ranero & Paster 2014, Kallulli
2019).
African languages, and Bantu in particular, provide especially rich
evidence in this domain. Object markers are typically realized as part
of the verbal complex, yet their syntactic and interpretive properties
often go beyond what is expected of canonical agreement. They can
correlate with discourse-related factors such as topicality,
givenness, or focus, and may display properties associated with
pronominal elements or doubling structures (Kallulli 2000; Den Dikken
2006; Zeller 2008; Coppock & Wechsler 2012; Kramer 2014; Baker &
Kramer 2018; Mursell 2018; Angelopoulos 2019). At the same time,
recent work shows that morphologically similar object markers may
correspond to different underlying structures across closely related
languages, and may exhibit both agreement-like and clitic-like
properties (Kramer 2014; Yuan 2021).
These patterns challenge a strict dichotomy between agreement and
clitic doubling. In some systems, object markers have been analyzed as
genuine agreement, in others as instances of clitic doubling, and in
still others as reflecting a combination of both. Cross-linguistic
comparison further sharpens these issues. For example, Hungarian
object agreement is sensitive to definiteness without behaving like a
pronominal element (Coppock & Wechsler 2012), while Inuit languages
show that identical morphology can correspond to distinct underlying
structures (Yuan 2021).
This workshop takes African languages as its empirical starting point
and asks what they contribute to general theories of agreement and
cliticization. Rather than assuming a fixed distinction, we aim to
explore how object marking systems emerge from the interaction of
syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and how African data can help
refine existing theoretical models.
We invite contributions from formal perspectives in syntax, semantics,
and pragmatics, including theoretical analyses, empirical case
studies, and experimental investigations.
Relevant topics include (but are not limited to): the agreement vs.
clitic doubling distinction, the role of discourse in object marking,
cross-linguistic variation in object marking systems, the
morphological-syntactic structure of object markers, a.o.
While the primary focus is on African languages, we also welcome
contributions on other language families (e.g. Indo-European or Ugric)
where they speak to the same issues and enable a broader
cross-linguistic discussion.
By bringing together researchers working on African languages and on
related phenomena across languages, the workshop aims to foster a
focused and productive discussion on how object marking systems inform
our understanding of the architecture of grammar.
Invited Speaker:
Michael Diercks (Pomona College)
Submission Details:
Please submit anonymous abstracts by 31 July 2026 through the WOCAL
submission page, indicating the name of the workshop at the top of the
first page:
https://univie.eventsair.com/PresentationPortal/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2FPresentationPortal%2Fwocal2027%2Fwocalsub
Abstracts should be written in English and contain a maximum of 500
words, excluding references.
All submissions will be considered for 20-minute oral presentations
followed by a 10-minute Q&A session at the workshop, which will be
conducted in English.
An author may submit a maximum of two abstracts, only one of which may
be single-authored.
Important Dates:
Abstract submission deadline: July 31, 2026
Notification of acceptance: August 31, 2026
More information on WOCAL 2027 can be found at:
https://univie.eventsair.com/cmspreview/wocal2027/
Organizers:
Ekaterina Levina (University of Vienna)
Dalina Kallulli (University of Vienna)
Adina Camelia Bleotu (University of Vienna, University of Bucharest)

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