37.939, Confs: Workshop at BCL 2026 - Word Order: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (Czech Republic)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-939. Mon Mar 09 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.939, Confs: Workshop at BCL 2026 - Word Order: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (Czech Republic)

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Date: 06-Mar-2026
From: Radek Šimík [radek.simik at ff.cuni.cz]
Subject: Workshop at BCL 2026 - Word Order: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives


Workshop at BCL 2026 - Word Order: Theoretical and Empirical
Perspectives

Date: 18-Nov-2026 - 20-Nov-2026
Location: Brno, Czech Republic
Contact: Radek Šimík
Contact Email: radek.simik at ff.cuni.cz
Meeting URL: https://sites.google.com/view/bclwordorder/

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Syntax;
Text/Corpus Linguistics

Submission Deadline: 30-Apr-2026

The workshop takes place as part of the Biennial of Czech Linguistics
2026: https://sites.google.com/mail.muni.cz/bcl2026en/homepage
Invited Speaker: Marieke Schouwstra (University of Amsterdam)
Workkshop Description:
Word order is a phenomenon that penetrates most linguistic
subdisciplines (from phonology via syntax to pragmatics) and has been
studied from a variety of perspectives (linguistic theory and
typology, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, acquisition, etc.).
Recent advances in linguistic theory and methodology afford new
perspectives on long-standing issues, such as word order language
types, canonical word order, word order alternations, or word order
processing.
There is a striking contrast between the number of available
constituent permutations and the number of linguistic and
extra-linguistic factors that interact with word order:
head-complement directionality, projectivity, syntactic function of
arguments, their semantic role, animacy, information status,
definiteness and referentiality, quantifier scope, pronominal binding,
verbal and clausal syntax/semantics, frequency, or communicative
efficiency. The multitude of factors and their varied nature raise the
question of how they fit the bottleneck of the one-dimensional channel
of word ordering.
Relevant Questions to Address:
- In which cases is the mapping mediated by syntactic structure and in
which cases does it suffice to assume surface restrictions? (Issues:
agreement, quantifier scope, pronominal binding, heavy NP shift;
Büring, 2013; Willer Gold et al., 2017; Bobaljik & Wurmbrand, 2012;
Antonyuk, 2015; Culicover, 2013; Arnold et al., 2000)
- How do individual factors compete for being expressed by word order?
(Müller, 1999; Titov, 2012; Tonhauser & Colijn, 2010; Levshina et al.,
2023)
- Which notion of definiteness or referentiality, if any, correlates
with word order alternations in articleless languages with flexible
word order? (Geist, 2010; Titov, 2012; Šimík & Demian, 2020)
- Are relative ordering (X before Y, postnominal, etc.) and absolute
ordering (X in position/specifier P, leftmost) qualitatively different
phenomena, correlated with different factors? (Šimík & Burianová,
2020; Titov, 2012; Cinque & Rizzi, 2012; Neeleman & van de Koot, 2008)
- What is the theoretical status of canonical word order and word
order types? (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2008; Namboodiripad, 2017; Gerdes
et al., 2021; Haider & Szucsich, 2022; Ebert et al., 2025)
- Which factors govern the ordering of words sharing the same category
or function, such as clitics, adjectives, or adverbs? (Marušič et al.,
2024; Scontras, 2023; Delfitto & Fiorin, 2017; Martin et al., 2020)
- What is the explanatory power and scope of general constraints such
as the final-over-final constraint in generative syntax (Biberauer et
al., 2014), projectivity in dependency syntax (Chuprinko et al.,
2025), or harmonic ordering (Culbertson & Newport, 2017)?
- Is there a way to systematically distinguish grammatical vs.
processing word order constraints in experimental measurements?
(Fanselow et al., 2002; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al., 2009; Fanselow,
2021)
- How is word order acquired during L1- and L2-acquisition? (Gervain
et al., 2008; Westergaard, 2009; Smolík, 2015; Kotfila, 2023; Hopp et
al., 2023)
- How and why does word ordering differ in different communicative
modalities (spoken, signed, gesture-based)? (Coons, 2022; Cecchetto et
al., 2009; Napoli et al., 2017; Goldin-Meadow et al., 2008; Gibson et
al., 2013)
We look for quality submissions addressing these and related
questions/topics, whether based on detailed analyses of individual
languages or particular phenomena, or broader, typologically oriented
analyses. Participants of any theoretical conviction or framework
allegiance are welcome. Both theoretical and empirical (experimental
or corpus-based) contributions are welcome. We hope that the workshop
promotes cross-framework and cross-methodological communication and
collaboration.



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