37.3326, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Inflectional Classes in Uralic and Beyond (Slovakia)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3326. Thu Oct 15 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 37.3326, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Inflectional Classes in Uralic and Beyond (Slovakia)
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Date: 13-Oct-2026
From: Lars Hennicke [lars.hennicke at uni-potsdam.de]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2027: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Inflectional Classes in Uralic and Beyon
Workshop at SLE 2027: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to
Inflectional Classes in Uralic and Beyon
Date: 25-Aug-2027 - 28-Aug-2027
Location: Košice, Slovakia
Meeting URL: https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2027/
Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Typology
Submission Deadline: 10-Nov-2026
Workshop Organisers:
Fedor Rozhanskiy (University of Tartu) <handarey at yahoo.com>
Peter Arkadiev (University of Potsdam) <alpgurev at gmail.com>
Lars Hennicke (University of Potsdam) <lars.hennicke at uni-potsdam.de>
The concept of inflectional classes (or, more specifically,
conjugations and declensions) has been known since ancient times.
Nevertheless, if we look at the linguistic tradition of the 19th and
the first half of the 20th century, there are relatively few works
that not only identify inflectional classes in descriptions of
particular languages but also attempt to examine the concept from a
theoretical perspective, in particular by analysing and comparing
different approaches to the identification of inflectional classes.
The situation began to change in the second half of the 20th century,
and since then work on the theoretical aspects of inflectional
classification has grown steadily (see e.g. Zaliznjak 1967, 1977;
Carstairs 1987, 1988; Carstairs-McCarthy 1994, 2002; Aronoff 1994;
Stump 2001, 2015, 2016; Dressler et al. 2006; Blevins 2008, 2016;
Corbett 2009; Ackerman & Malouf 2013, 2016; Stump & Finkel 2015; Sims
& Parker 2016; Polivanova 2023).
Within morphology, the concept of an “inflectional class” is more
complex than, for example, concepts associated with basic grammatical
categories such as “case”, “number”, “tense”, “mood”, etc. First,
inflectional classes presuppose the morphological expression of such
categories, and this expression must vary in a non-trivial way that
goes beyond purely phonologically conditioned allomorphy (although
even this can be intricate). Second, a system of inflectional classes
postulated for a given language depends to a considerable extent on
the particular task faced by the researcher: descriptions intended for
an academic grammar, a school textbook, or automatic synthesis or
analysis of word forms will necessarily differ. Third, grouping
lexemes into inflectional classes is based on the notion of
“similarity”: “similar” lexemes are assigned to the same inflectional
class and “dissimilar” lexemes to different classes. “Similarity” as
such is too subjective to serve as a reliable criterion for
classification, while attempts to formalise it, e.g. in terms of
“inflectional identity”, immediately raise the question of arbitrarily
taking certain criteria (e.g. identity of affixal exponence) as more
important than others (e.g. differences in stem formation). Fourth,
and in connection with the last point, the parameters underlying a
system of inflectional classes may belong to different levels of
linguistic structure: inflectional markers to morphology, stress and
other prosodic properties to phonology, and stem alternations to
morphophonology.
Inflectional class systems and their complexity differ widely across
languages. For some languages (e.g. Turkish), the concept of an
“inflectional class” is fully or almost irrelevant; for others (e.g.
Burmeso, Donohue 2001), inflectional classes can be described in terms
of transparent sets of affixal markers. However, there are many
languages in which inflection cannot be adequately described by simply
listing several sets of affixes. This is the case, in particular, in a
number of Uralic languages, especially in the Saami, Finnic and
Samoyedic branches, where inflection may involve complex interactions
between affixal marking and various types of stem alternation. Similar
issues concern many languages from various families, such as
Indo-European (e.g. Baltic and Slavic, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek,
Icelandic), Nilotic (e.g. Maasai, Nuer, Dinka, Shilluk), or
Otomanguean; see an example from Latvian below. Such languages require
non-trivial approaches to the description of inflectional systems. Our
workshop will focus on these phenomena and on empirical and
theoretical approaches to their analysis.
Latvian (Baltic, Nau 1998: 30–31)
verb Infinitive Present 1Sg, 1Pl Past 1Sg, 1Pl
‘work’ strādā-t strādāj-u, strādāj-am strādāj-u, strādāj-ām
‘sing’ dziedā-t dzied-u, dzied-am dziedāj-u, dziedāj-ām
‘sit’ sēdē-t sēž-u, sēž-am sēdēj-u, sēdēj-ām
‘write’ rakstī-t rakst-u, rakst-ām rakstīj-u, rakstīj-ām
‘drive’ brauk-t brauc-u, brauc-am brauc-u, brauc-ām
‘break’ lauz-t lauž-u, lauž-am lauz-u, lauz-ām
‘decide’ lem-t lemj-u, lemj-am lēm-u, lēm-ām
‘buy’ pirk-t pērk-u, pērk-am pirk-u, pirk-ām
When developing a system of inflectional classes for such languages,
the researcher faces many issues that have to be resolved, starting
from the ambiguous notion of “inflectional class” itself. For example,
must inflectional classes be entirely unmotivated by phonological
and/or semantic factors (see discussion in Gardani 2027)? Which forms
should be selected as “principal parts” and how many of them are
acceptable (Finkel & Stump 2007)? What is the minimum number of
lexemes that may constitute an inflectional class, and,
correspondingly, what proportion of a language’s lexicon can
reasonably be treated as “exceptions”, i.e. words that remain outside
the system of inflectional classes (see e.g. Arkadiev 2021 on
Lithuanian verbs)?
The aim of our workshop is to bring together linguists working on
different languages whose inflectional class systems can only be
adequately described by going beyond distinct sets of affixal markers
and taking into account such phenomena as stem alternations, stress
and tone, order and position of exponents and potentially others. We
focus particularly on Uralic languages, since these issues are highly
relevant to many of them and have been discussed in numerous
publications (see, for example, Viks 1977, 1980, 1994, 1995; Helimski
1994; Salminen 1997; Baermann 2014; Saar 2017; Rozhanskiy & Markus
2020). The questions to be addressed in individual presentations
include, but are not restricted to, the following:
1. Should all parameters of inflection distinguishing between lexemes
in a given language have equal weight in the analysis of its
inflectional class system (see e.g. Parker & Sims 2020)? If not, on
which grounds can we determine which parameters should be regarded as
“primary” vs. “secondary” in constructing a layered system of
inflectional classes?
2. What requirements should a system of inflectional classes meet, and
what factors determine these requirements? In particular, can the
requirement of “autonomy” of inflectional classes from either
phonology or lexical semantics be upheld in practice?
3. What principles should guide the selection of principal parts, and
what factors should determine the balance between the number of
principal parts and the number of morpho(phono)logical rules in a
system of inflectional classes?
4. What modern computational methods can be used to develop a system
of inflectional classes for a language, and how can they be applied
(e.g. Guzmán Naranjo 2019; Bonami & Beniamine 2021; Nikolaev et al.
2026)?
5. What tendencies can be observed in the diachronic development of
inflectional class systems, and what triggers such changes (e.g.
Gardani 2013, 2027)?
We welcome both theoretical and typological presentations, as well as
studies of individual languages for which the issues outlined above
are particularly relevant.
We invite 20-minute presentations, followed by 5 minutes of
discussion. Preliminary abstracts (100 words, in DOCX format) should
be sent to all the workshop organisers (see the addresses above) by 10
November 2026.
Accepted abstracts will form part of the workshop proposal to be
submitted on 20 November 2027.
References:
Ackerman, F. & R. Malouf. 2013. Morphological organization: The low
conditional entropy conjecture. Language 89(3), 429–464.
Ackerman, F. & R. Malouf. 2016. Implicative relations in word-based
morphological systems. In: A. Hippisley and G. Stump (eds.), Cambridge
Handbook of Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
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Arkadiev P. 2021. Opyt morfologičeskoj klassifikacii litovskix
glagolov [An essay of a morphological classification of Lithuanian
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Baermann M. 2014. Covert systematicity in a distributionally complex
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Blevins J. P. 2008. Case and declensional paradigms. The Oxford
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