37.3307, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 - To P(reposition) or Not to P(reposition): Differential Marking in Synchrony and Diachrony (Slovakia)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3307. Wed Oct 14 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3307, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 - To P(reposition) or Not to P(reposition): Differential Marking in Synchrony and Diachrony (Slovakia)

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Date: 12-Oct-2026
From: Eva Zehentner [eva.zehentner at es.uzh.ch]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2027 - To P(reposition) or Not to P(reposition): Differential Marking in Synchrony and Diachrony


Workshop at SLE 2027 - To P(reposition) or Not to P(reposition):
Differential Marking in Synchrony and Diachrony

Date: 25-Aug-2027 - 28-Aug-2027
Location: Košice, Slovakia
Meeting URL:
https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2027/workshop-proposals-call-for-abstracts/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics;
Syntax; Text/Corpus Linguistics; Typology

Submission Deadline: 10-Nov-2026

Convenors:
Olivier Winistörfer (University of Zurich)
Eva Zehentner (University of Zurich)
Call:
Abstracts (max. 100 words, excluding references) should be sent to
Olivier Winistörfer (olivier.winistoerfer at uzh.ch) and Eva Zehentner
(eva.zehentner at es.uzh.ch) by 10 November 2026. If the workshop is
accepted, authors will be asked to submit revised 500-word abstracts
according to the SLE guidelines.
Keywords:
prepositions, syntactic alternations, differential argument marking,
optionality, free variation
Workshop Description:
Adpositions, and especially prepositions, constitute “an interesting
word class” (Hovy et al. 2010: 454) or more provocatively, “an
annoying little surface peculiarity” (Jackendoff 1973: 345). They play
an integral part in the systems of many languages as one of the major
linguistic resources for expressing relations between entities,
participants, events, or circumstances, but at the same time, also
often present striking challenges to language users as well as
linguists (Baldwin et al. 2009: 119).
One such challenge is that prepositions are typically subject to
substantial variation: Languages differ considerably in what relations
are expressed prepositionally and which are not, and individual
languages often allow for ‘optional’ preposition use in alternation
with other means of expression, or variable preposition use for
particular meanings (often referred to a ‘differential argument
marking’; e.g. Seržant & Witzlack-Makarevich 2018). For instance, the
well-known phenomenon of differential object marking refers to the
ability of prepositional marking of objects in transitive clauses to
alternate with nominal (zero) patterns in languages like Hebrew or
Spanish (Sp. Juan está dibujando a María ‘John is drawing Mary’ vs
Juan está dibujando una flor ‘John is drawing a flower’; e.g. Bossong
1998; Wall & Obrist 2021; Kabatek et al. 2021, among many others).
Similar patterns can be found, in various languages, with indirect
objects in ditransitives (Engl. I gave the book to them vs I gave them
the book; Malkovich et al. 2010), but also with subjects, and other
elements like adjuncts. This can, for example, be seen in a process
frequently (but not exclusively) related to migrant youth language in
urban centres, where overt preposition elision in patterns expressing
motion towards proper noun goals likewise gives rise to variation
between NP- and PP-use (German Gehen wir zu Lidl ‘Let’s go to Lidl’ vs
Gehen wir Lidl ‘Let’s go Lidl’; cf. Wiese et al. 2009; Bailey 2019).
More generally, adpositions represent a cross-linguistically common
syntactic strategy of argument marking interacting with morphological
strategies like nominal inflection (case marking) or word order
restrictions (e.g. Lamers & De Swart 2012). Even where prepositional
marking is obligatory in principle, however, speakers may have a
choice between different prepositions, or prepositions and PPs may
show variation with respect to their formal and functional features
(e.g. pied-piping vs preposition stranding; Günther 2021).
The proposed workshop takes a highly encompassing perspective on
variation in prepositional marking, viewing such patterns as
manifestations of a broader phenomenon of ‘differential preposition
use’, with a main focus on the factors impacting such alternations.
Specifically, we are interested in identifying more general tendencies
in which factors - whether phonological, morphological, syntactic,
semantic, pragmatic, lexical, processing-related, or
sociolinguistically motivated - condition variation in all sorts of
phenomena involving prepositional marking. While this includes
investigations into variation in individual languages, our particular
interest lies in comparative/ typological perspectives as well as
diachronic approaches, showcasing how variation may play out across
languages or varieties of languages, or how systems of variation may
emerge and change over time.
As to typological viewpoints, preposition ellipsis with motion verbs,
for example, can be observed in a number of regional varieties of
Albanian, Greek, Romance and Slavic languages, in addition to being
linked to urban youth varieties (Sandfeld 1930; Tomić 2006; Gehrke &
Lekakou 2013; Winistörfer et al. 2025). This kind of zero vs
prepositional marking of spatial relations, also known as differential
place marking, has attracted considerable attention from typologists
in recent decades (e.g. Stolz et al. 2014; Haspelmath 2019; Nintemann
2026). Although these phenomena clearly differ in their
sociolinguistic distributional features, they may, however, still be
dependent on similar factors or reflect similar underlying mechanisms.
In other alternations, by contrast, the conditioning factors may
differ considerably: While research on differential object marking in
Spanish points towards ambiguity avoidance (with animate objects
requiring disambiguation via the preposition) or – as more recently
proposed – atypicality/ predictability of the object referent as a key
driving factor (Tal et al. 2022), parallel pattern in English, viz.
the conative alternation (I kicked at the ball vs I kicked the ball)
instead seems to be highly semantically conditioned (Perek 2014).
Diachrony then adds another dimension to these questions in that we
can examine the motivations behind expansions or retreats of
prepositional patterns in favour or at the expense of other means of
expression. That is, cases of incipient variation and its spread may
provide a window into restructuring processes of grammatical systems.
Here, an important question is whether synchronic variation
constitutes an intermediate, temporary stage of transition towards
stable differentiation, or an ongoing redistribution of functions. For
instance, ambiguity (or predictability) appears to play a role in the
case of the emergence of prepositional ditransitives in the history of
the English dative alternation (McFadden 2002; Zehentner 2021); this
can in turn be linked to systemic changes in argument marking
strategies like a decrease in morphological complexity and
indicativeness of case morphology in particular, together with changes
in positional restrictions in languages. In present day English,
however, we observe a seemingly highly conventionalised and constant
division of labour situation between the variants, guided by lexical
and processing-related factors such as verb lemma and object length
(Bresnan et al. 2007). This suggests that conditioning mechanisms of
variation can not only differ across languages, but also across time
periods (Wolk et al. 2014).
The workshop thus aims at bringing together typological and diachronic
perspectives, and at shifting attention towards prepositional marking
as one strategy within larger systems of relational encoding. We
invite contributions approaching cases of variation with prepositions
from such a viewpoint, and particularly encourage work that connects
empirical analyses of selected phenomena in individual languages, as
well as across languages and time, to broader questions on syntactic
variation (cf. also recent discussions on ‘optionality’, ‘free
variation’ and ‘isomorphism’ in language, e.g. the contributions in
Kopf & Weber 2023).
The research questions the workshop will explore include, but are not
limited to, the following:
- Which semantic, pragmatic, syntactic, and discourse-related factors
condition differential preposition marking cross-linguistically, and
how are these factors reflected in individual languages?
- What diachronic processes give rise to differential prepositional
marking, and to what extent are these processes recurrent across
languages?
- Are different types of differential marking governed by comparable
semantic, pragmatic, and discourse factors, and does the presence of
one type of differential marking influence the distribution or
development of another?
- To what extent does differential prepositional marking extend beyond
the prototypical functions of prepositions, and how does this
distinguish it from differential marking with other strategies such as
case?



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