37.3426, Confs: Workshop at ICHL 2027 - The Same, but Not Equal: Cross-Linguistic Insights Into the Diachrony of the Prefield Position (Iceland)

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Subject: 37.3426, Confs: Workshop at ICHL 2027 - The Same, but Not Equal: Cross-Linguistic Insights Into the Diachrony of the Prefield Position (Iceland)

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Date: 17-Oct-2026
From: Łukasz Jędrzejowski [lukasz.jedrzejowski at uia.no]
Subject: Workshop at ICHL 2027 - The Same, but Not Equal: Cross-Linguistic Insights Into the Diachrony of the Prefield Position


Workshop at ICHL 2027 - The Same, but Not Equal: Cross-Linguistic
Insights Into the Diachrony of the Prefield Position

Date: 26-Jul-2027 - 30-Jul-2027
Location: Reykjavík, Iceland
Contact: Łukasz Jędrzejowski
Contact Email: lukasz.jedrzejowski at uia.no
Meeting URL: https://ichl28.hi.is/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics;
Syntax

Submission Deadline: 01-Dec-2026

The prefield has received considerable attention in both synchronic
and diachronic research on verb-second (V2) languages. Although these
languages share the characteristic placement of a constituent before
the finite verb, the grammatical properties of this preverbal domain
are far from uniform. In German, for instance, the prefield can host
constituents of different syntactic categories and is characterized by
considerable categorial flexibility (Blümel 2017). At the same time,
prefield occupation is not reducible to a single syntactic operation.
Frey (2006) argues that the German prefield can be filled by different
mechanisms, including Ā-movement, formally triggered movement and
base-generation. Such categorial flexibility has also figured
prominently in comparative accounts of V2: Holmberg (2015: 348), for
instance, states that “[a]ll of the V2 languages allow preposing of
adverbs and any kind of adverbial phrases and clauses.” Yet categorial
flexibility does not necessarily imply uniformity in the syntactic,
semantic and discourse-pragmatic conditions governing prefield
occupation.
Historical research has further demonstrated that the grammatical
properties of the left-peripheral domain are themselves subject to
change. Work on older Germanic and Romance has documented changes not
only in verb placement, but also in the inventory, distribution,
derivation and discourse properties of preverbal constituents
(Hinterhölzl & Petrova 2010, Ledgeway 2012, Wolfe 2018,
Klævik-Pettersen 2019). The history of Icelandic, for example, shows
changes in both the inventory and information-structural properties of
preverbal constituents, with Old Icelandic licensing types of prefield
occupation that differ from those found in the modern language (Booth
& Beck 2021). Similarly, comparative work on Old English and Old
French demonstrates that superficially comparable left-peripheral
expressions need not have the same derivational status: topics may be
movement-derived in one language but base-generated in another and the
availability of these strategies may itself change historically (van
Kemenade & Meklenborg 2021). Importantly for the present workshop,
Hinterhölzl (2021) relates such differences to the historical
integration of formerly clause-external expressions, arguing that
changes in prosodic integration may correlate with a reanalysis of
their derivational status.
These findings raise a broader comparative and diachronic question:
how do languages that share an apparently similar preverbal
configuration come to differ in the types of expressions they license
there and in the mechanisms by which these expressions are integrated?
A particularly revealing synchronic contrast is found between German
and Norwegian. Both languages display V2 in declarative main clauses,
but they differ in the integration of speech act modifiers. Under the
intended speech act reading, the German purpose clause Um es klar zu
sagen (‘to put it clearly’) cannot itself function as the integrated
prefield constituent and remains outside the matrix CP, resulting in
linear V3. Its Norwegian counterpart For å si det klart, by contrast,
can occupy the prefield, as in (3), whereas the corresponding linear
V3 pattern is at best marginal and requires a strong prosodic break.
The resulting contrast is illustrated in (1)–(4):
(1) Um es klar zu sagen, [CP [Spec,CP ich] [C0 hätte] keine bessere
Entscheidung treffen können].               (German)
(2) *[CP [Spec,CP Um es klar zu sagen], [C0 hätte] ich keine bessere
Entscheidung treffen können].              (German)
(3) [CP [Spec,CP For å si det klart], [C0 kunne] jeg ikke ha tatt en
bedre beslutning].
(Norwegian)
(4) *For å si det klart, [CP [Spec,CP jeg] [C0 kunne] ikke ha tatt en
bedre beslutning].                                         (Norwegian)
‘To put it clearly, I couldn't have made a better decision.’
Previous studies have illuminated individual dimensions of this
variation in particular languages, language families and historical
periods. What is still lacking is a systematic comparative perspective
on how these dimensions interact in shaping the historical development
of the prefield. This workshop proposes to bring these strands of
research together by taking the diachrony of the prefield itself as
the central comparative problem. Rather than assuming that the
preverbal position has a uniform grammatical profile across V2
languages, we ask how language-specific restrictions on its occupation
arise, change, and interact with different areas of grammar.
The workshop seeks to address, among others, questions such as the
following:
 - Which syntactic, semantic and discourse-pragmatic types of
expressions can occupy the prefield in different languages and at
different historical stages?
 - How does the inventory of expressions licensed in the prefield
change over time and what kinds of expansion or restriction can be
identified?
 - How do mechanisms responsible for prefield occupation, such as
movement and base-generation, change historically and what role does
reanalysis play in these developments?
 - To what extent do syntax and information structure in the prefield
go hand in hand, where do mismatches arise, and how does their
relationship change over time?
 - Why are some prefield constituents syntactically integrated, while
others occur in dislocation?
 - To what extent can synchronic differences between closely related
languages be traced back to different historical developments of their
preverbal domain?
 - Are there recurrent pathways by which clause-external or
discourse-related expressions become integrated into the prefield or
conversely become less integrated and cease to be licensed there?
By bringing together work on different languages and historical
periods, the workshop aims to treat the prefield as a domain of
cross-linguistic and diachronic variation in its own right. Its
purpose is not to propose another general account of V2 or to
investigate the emergence and loss of verb-second word order as such.
Rather, V2 languages provide a particularly revealing comparative
domain in which an apparently similar clause-initial position can be
shown to have different grammatical properties. The central question
is therefore not simply what these languages share, but how their
prefields came to differ.
We particularly welcome contributions that compare languages or
varieties, reconstruct changes in the grammatical properties of the
prefield, investigate the historical emergence of language-specific
restrictions or connect changes in prefield occupation to developments
in syntax, discourse structure and information structure.
Organizers:
Łukasz Jędrzejowski (lukasz.jedrzejowski at uia.no), University of Agder,
Norway
Espen Johan Klævik-Pettersen (espen.klavik-pettersen at uia.no),
University of Agder, Norway
Submission Guidelines:
Abstracts should include a descriptive title, main text, and
references and must not exceed 500 words, excluding references. All
abstracts must be submitted through EasyAbs. When submitting, please
indicate Workshop W12.
https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/ICHL28/
Submission deadline: December 1, 2026.
Papers not accepted for the workshop may also be submitted to the
General Session.
References:
Blümel, Andreas. 2017. Exocentric root declaratives: Evidence from V2.
In: Leah Bauke & Andreas Blümel (eds.), Labels and Roots (Studies in
Generative Grammar 128), 263–289. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Booth, Hannah & Christin Beck. 2021. Verb-second and verb-first in the
history of Icelandic. Journal of Historical Syntax 5(28): 1–53.
Frey, Werner. 2006. Contrast and movement to the German prefield. In:
Valéria Molnar & Susanne Winkler (eds.), The Architecture of Focus
(Studies in Generative Grammar 82), 235–264. Berlin: Mouton De
Gruyter.
Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2021. V2 and topicalization in Germanic and
Romance. In: Sam Wolfe & Christine Meklenborg (eds.), Continuity and
Variation in Germanic and Romance, 195–222. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Hinterhölzl, Roland & Svetlana Petrova. 2010. From V1 to V2 in West
Germanic. Lingua 120(2): 315–328.
Holmberg, Anders. 2015. Verb second. In: Tibor Kiss & Artemis
Alexiadou (eds.), Syntax – Theory and Analysis. An International
Handbook, vol. 1 (Handbücher zur Sprach- und
Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and
Communication Science 42/1), 342–383. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Klævik-Pettersen, Espen. 2019. What is Germanic and what is not about
Old French V2. Linguistic Variation 19(1): 141–198.
van Kemenade, Ans & Christine Meklenborg. 2021. Issues in the left
periphery of Old French and Old English. Topic types and the V2
constraint. In: Sam Wolfe & Christine Meklenborg (eds.), Continuity
and Variation in Germanic and Romance, 248–274. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Ledgeway, Adam. 2012. From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic Typology
and Change (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics
1). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wolfe, Sam. 2018. Verb Second in Medieval Romance (Oxford Studies in
Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 34). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.


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