37.924, Confs: Workshop: Rightward Movement (United Kingdom)

Fri Mar 6 11:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-924. Fri Mar 06 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.924, Confs: Workshop: Rightward Movement (United Kingdom)

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Date: 04-Mar-2026
From: Sana Kidwai [sana.kidwai.15 at ucl.ac.uk]
Subject: Workshop: Rightward Movement

Workshop: Rightward Movement

Date: 14-Jul-2026 - 15-Jul-2026
Location: London, United Kingdom
Contact: Sana Kidwai
Contact Email: sana.kidwai.15 at ucl.ac.uk

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax

Submission Deadline: 24-Apr-2026

Organisers: Klaus Abels, Ad Neeleman, Sakshi Bhatia, Sana Kidwai
Workshop webpage: TBA
Rightward Movement is a two-day inaugural workshop of the AHRC funded
project 'The Structure and Processing of Rightward Scrambling in
Hindi-Urdu.’ The workshop will bring together researchers working on
the syntax of (apparent) rightward movement in any language. It aims
to advance our understanding of left-right asymmetries and word order
variation by exploring theoretical and empirical perspectives on
rightward movement. The workshop will feature a mix of presentations
by members of the project and its board as well as talks selected via
abstract submission.
Left-right asymmetries are pervasive in language. Rightward movement
specifically has long been of interest in investigating such
asymmetries. Many scholars have argued that rightward movement is
either heavily restricted or completely banned (Ross, 1967; Kayne,
1994). Such ideas have led to insights into important typological
patterns (see Cinque 2003, 2009, Steddy and Samek Lodovici 2011, Abels
and Neeleman 2012, etc.). Whether such constraints arise directly from
the theory of syntax (Kayne 1994) or from syntax external
considerations (Medeiros 2018, Abels and Neeleman, to appear) is an
open question. Empirically, constituents can be found to the right of
their canonical positions in a wide range of constructions, including
heavy NP shift, extraposition, right dislocation and right node
raising, which often also leads to special prosodic and/or information
structure effects (see papers in Beerman, LeBlanc, and van Riemsdijk
1997,Webelhuth, Sailer & Walker, 2013). Such phenomena have received a
variety of analyses, some allowing for restricted rightward movement,
and others maintaining the ban on rightward movement and deriving
surface word orders through mechanisms like remnant movement,
base-generation plus linearisation, PF reordering, and/or ellipsis. In
this workshop, we invite research on syntactic constructions with
(apparent) rightward movement. Relevant topics include, but are not
limited to, theoretical analyses of rightward movement, the structure
and function of the right periphery, and interface effects of
rightward displacement, in particular those related to scope, binding,
prosody and information structure. We particularly welcome
presentations developing and sharpening diagnostic tools to tease
apart rightward movement from other kinds of extraposition.
We invite anonymised abstract submissions for oral presentations in a
relaxed format encouraging discussion (roughly 30min talk + 15min
discussion). Abstracts should be no longer than one page of text (A4,
1inch margins, 11pt), and a second page containing examples, figures,
tables, and references. Authors may submit up to two abstracts – they
may be the first author of only one submission and can be
co-author/presenter on the second. Abstracts should be submitted at
https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/RightMove2026/. Please
contact sana.kidwai.15 at ucl.ac.uk for any queries.
This workshop is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council
under the project 'The Structure and Processing of Rightward
Scrambling in Hindi-Urdu’ (UKRI2807).
Important Dates:
 - Abstract submission deadline: April 24
 - Notification of acceptance: May 15
 - Workshop dates: July 14-15
References:
Abels, Klaus and Ad Neeleman (to appear). “Linear Asymmetries and
Incremental Parsing”. In: Language.
Beerman, Dorothee, David LeBlanc, and Henk van Riemsdijk, eds. (1997).
Rightward Movement. Vol. 17. Linguistik Aktuell. Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Cinque, Guglielmo (2005). “Deriving Greenberg’s Universal 20 and its
Exceptions”. In: Linguistic Inquiry 36.3, pp. 315–332.
Cinque, Guglielmo (2009). “The fundamental left-right asymmetry of
natural languages”. In: Universals of Language Today. Ed. by Sergio
Scalise, Elisabetta Magni, and Antonietta Bisetto. Dordrecht:
Springer, pp. 165–184.
Kayne, R. (1994). The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Medeiros, David P (2018). “ULTRA: Universal Grammar as a Universal
Parser”. In: Frontiers in Psychology 9, p. 155. doi:
10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00155. url:
https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00155.
Ross, J. R. (1967). Constraints on Variables in Syntax. PhD
dissertation. MIT.
Steddy, Sam and Vieri Samek-Lodovici (2011). “On the Ungrammaticality
of Remnant Movement in the Derivation of Greenberg’s Universal 20”.
In: Linguistic Inquiry 42.3, pp. 445–469.
Webelhuth, G., Sailer, M., & Walker, H. (Eds.). (2013). Rightward
movement in a comparative perspective. John Benjamins Publishing
Company.

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