37.3443, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 – From Latin to the Vernacular: Translated Texts in the History of European Languages (Slovakia)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3443. Wed 21 Oct 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3443, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 – From Latin to the Vernacular: Translated Texts in the History of European Languages (Slovakia)

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Date: 19-Oct-2026
From: Marie Molenaers [marie.molenaers at kuleuven.be]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2027 – From Latin to the Vernacular: Translated Texts in the History of European Languages


Workshop at SLE 2027 – From Latin to the Vernacular: Translated Texts
in the History of European Languages
Short Title: SLE 2027 WS

Date: 25-Aug-2027 - 28-Aug-2027
Location: Košice, Slovakia
Contact: Santiago Del Rey Quesada (Universidad de Sevilla), Marie
Molenaers (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Meeting URL: https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2027/

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Syntax;
Text/Corpus Linguistics; Translation

Submission Deadline: 15-Nov-2026

Convenors:
Santiago Del Rey Quesada (Universidad de Sevilla)
Marie Molenaers (KU Leuven)
Call for preliminary abstracts:
We invite preliminary abstracts for the proposed workshop “From Latin
to the Vernacular: Translated Texts in the History of European
Languages” at SLE 2027.
Please send a provisional title and an abstract of no more than 100
words, together with the author name(s) and affiliation(s), to both
convenors at sdelrey at us.es and marie.molenaers at kuleuven.be by 15
November 2026.
The workshop is subject to acceptance by the SLE. If the proposal is
accepted, contributors will be invited to submit a full abstract
through EasyChair before 15 January 2027, for individual review.
Keywords: Latin; translation; linguistic elaboration; language
contact; textualisation of orality.
Workshop description and research questions:
Since the early days of comparative linguistics, historical Romance
linguistics has focused on language change ‘from below’, in the sense
defined by Labov (1994). It has traditionally proceeded from the
premise that the Latin spoken by an illiterate majority—attested only
through indirect evidence—underwent substantial phonetic,
morphosyntactic, and lexical changes which ultimately formed the basis
of the Romance languages. Comparison between Latin and the Romance
languages has thus enabled scholars to reconstruct their lines of
development across different levels of linguistic analysis and to
identify their distinctive features.
While the so-called ‘Vulgar Latin’ has long served as the primary
point of reference for establishing similarities and differences among
the Romance languages, recent work in historical variational
linguistics has restored considerable importance to written Latin.
Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, written Latin
continued to function as a linguistic adstratum in scripturality
across a range of ‘discourse traditions’ (Koch 1987; Lebsanft/Schrott
2015). This adstratum also played a crucial role in the consolidation
of non-Romance European languages as vehicles of written communication
(Sornicola 1995; Cornillie/Drinka (eds.) 2019).
The incorporation of new ‘discourse traditions’ into early vernacular
European languages (Koch 1987; Kabatek 2005 [2018]; Del Rey Quesada
2021) played a key role in the evolution of their syntax, lexicon, and
pragmatic-discursive features. These developments may be understood as
processes of ‘extensive’ and ‘intensive’ linguistic elaboration (Kloss
2nd edn. 1978; Koch/Oesterreicher 1990 [2011]), involving textual
appropriation and emulation through which vernacular languages
developed their own discourse mechanisms and became emerging languages
of culture, including in domains of communicative distance previously
reserved for Latin. Such elaboration constitutes a crucial stage in
processes of language standardisation (Haugen 1966; Milroy/Milroy 1985
[2012]; Maas 2014).
In this context, the scriptural production of classical,
post-classical, and medieval Latin provided a fundamental model and
resource in the ‘acculturation’ of the neo-Latin languages (Bossong
1979). Translations produced to disseminate knowledge and legal
traditions—especially in the medieval period—have therefore been
regarded as a key instrument in these elaboration processes (Albrecht
1995, 2017; Kabatek 2005). In particular, lexical-semantic and
syntactic-discursive features, which will be of special interest to us
in this workshop, have often been cited as evidence that translation
acts as a catalyst for linguistic elaboration, primarily through the
interference of Latin models in vernacular texts (Fernández-Ordóñez
2004). However, a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative
assessment of the relationship between translation and linguistic
elaboration remains a desideratum.
Even in the case of so-called ‘syntactic Latinism’ (Raible 1996),
often considered the clearest manifestation of such elaboration, there
is no consensus regarding the role of translation. While some scholars
(Stimming 1915; Blatt 1957; Pagliaro/Belardi 1963; Lorian 1968)
attribute Latinate features to translational activity since the Middle
Ages, others (Segre 1952; Russell 1985; Pountain 1998) have argued
that translated texts are not necessarily the most Latinate.
Despite their clear relevance for the study of syntactic variation and
interference, texts translated from Latin have often been marginalised
both in literary canons and in linguistic historiography. This
marginalisation may be linked to the perception of translations as
secondary products (Baker 1993). However, within the framework of
Corpus-based Translation Studies, translated texts have been shown to
exhibit higher degrees of standardisation than non-translated texts
(Del Rey Quesada 2015c), making them particularly valuable for
linguistic analysis.
This workshop aims to highlight the importance of translations from
Latin into European vernacular languages both as a source of
linguistic knowledge and as a laboratory for the study of linguistic
interference (Coseriu 1977; Del Rey Quesada 2020) between Latin source
texts and vernacular target texts. In particular, it is based on the
assumption that translated texts provide an ideal framework for
investigating syntactic variation and contact-induced change (Greco
2018, Molenaers 2023), especially in cases where multiple translations
of the same source text are available.
A further aim of the workshop is to address the question of whether
Latin also functioned as a source for the textualisation of orality,
despite having primarily been viewed as a model for written discourse
(‘literacy’) and as a driver of linguistic elaboration in the domain
of communicative distance (see Koch/Oesterreicher 1990 [2011]). While
rhetorical and literary studies have emphasised the influence of
authors such as Cicero, St Augustine, and Erasmus on medieval and
humanistic dialogue, it remains unclear from a linguistic and
discursive perspective to what extent Latin (and, at times, Greek)
shaped the selection of textual material and pragmatic strategies used
to represent orality in writing.
Recent advances in the discourse-pragmatic study of Latin (Risselada
1993; Kroon 1995; Unceta Gómez 2009; Ghezzi/Molinelli (eds.) 2014;
Barrios-Lech 2016; Fedriani/Molinelli 2022; Unceta Gómez/Berger (eds.)
2022) have provided new insights into communicative dynamics that were
long overlooked in traditional grammatical approaches. Building on
these significant advances, studies by Del Rey Quesada (2015a, 2015b,
2024, 2026) suggest that translation from Greek and, above all, from
Latin texts from the humanistic period onwards played a crucial role
in the development and specialisation of strategies for the
textualisation of orality in Romance languages. This workshop also
invites scholars working on translations from Latin into other
European vernaculars to explore whether similar effects can be
observed in the development of conversational styles in European
literary traditions.
We invite contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following
topics:
 - Translation from Latin into European vernacular languages in the
Middle Ages as a process of linguistic elaboration: syntactic,
discursive, and lexical-semantic perspectives
 - Translation from Latin and the refinement of techniques for the
textualisation of orality from the humanistic period onwards (dialogue
and theatre): syntax, speech acts, (im)politeness, discourse markers,
conversation analysis, lexis, and formulaicity
 - Lexical-semantic, morphosyntactic, and discursive Latinisms in a
contrastive perspective (source text vs. target text): non-finite
constructions (including the Accusativus cum Infinitivo and absolute
constructions) and other morphological, syntactic, discursive, and
semantic calques
 - The tension between translated and non-translated texts:
contrastive analyses of authors who were both translators of Latin
texts (including self-translations) and producers of original
vernacular works
 - Theoretical approaches to linguistic interference in the field of
translation from Latin into the vernacular: typology of phenomena,
translational literalness, norm vs. idiolect, and translation
universals
 - Manuscript variation and its impact on the linguistic analysis of
translated texts from Latin: textual traditions, variants, glosses,
marginalia, paratexts, scribal intervention, and processes of
rewriting and adaptation
 - Code-switching and multilingual practices in translation contexts:
interaction between Latin and vernacular languages and their
discursive, pragmatic, and sociocultural functions
 - Sociolinguistic dimensions of translation from Latin into the
vernacular: translators’ profiles, institutional settings (court,
monastery, printing press), target audiences (lay, female, elite), and
their role in knowledge transmission, authority construction, and
processes of standardisation and language change
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