37.3488, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 - Reassessing Impersonality: Definitions, Diagnostics, and Cross-Linguistic Comparison (Slovakia)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3488. Fri 23 Oct 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3488, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 - Reassessing Impersonality: Definitions, Diagnostics, and Cross-Linguistic Comparison (Slovakia)

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Date: 21-Oct-2026
From: Diego Luinetti [d.luinetti at unimarconi.it]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2027 - Reassessing Impersonality: Definitions, Diagnostics, and Cross-Linguistic Comparison

Workshop at SLE 2027 - Reassessing Impersonality: Definitions,
Diagnostics, and Cross-Linguistic Comparison

Date: 25-Aug-2027 - 28-Aug-2027
Location: Košice, Slovakia

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

Submission Deadline: 10-Nov-2026

Convenors:
Diego Luinetti (Guglielmo Marconi University in Rome)
d.luinetti at unimarconi.it
Katarzyna Janic (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan)
katarzyna.janic at amu.edu.pl
Keywords: impersonal constructions, cross-linguistic comparison,
alignment patterns, non-canonical subject coding, information
structure.
Call for abstracts: We invite submissions of 100-word abstracts
(excluded references) by November 10. Please, submit your abstracts to
both our e-mail addresses. If the workshop is approved, the authors
will be asked to submit a revised 500-word abstract.
Research background: Impersonal constructions (ICs) have received
considerable attention, particularly in Indo-European linguistics
(e.g., various contributions to Siewierska 2008, Siewierska 2011;
Bauer 2000: §3; Kibort 2001; Schlund 2020; Sigurðardóttir & Eythórsson
2022; Barðdal 2023), including research on their diachronic
development (e.g., Eythórsson 2000; Luinetti 2025, 2026). Since the
early 2000s, phenomena traditionally associated with impersonality
have also been investigated from cross-linguistic and typological
perspectives, both in studies of noncanonical argument marking and
subjecthood (e.g., Aikhenvald et al. 2001; Seržant & Kulikov 2013) and
in research treating impersonality as a domain of typological
comparison in its own right (e.g., Siewierska 2008; Malchukov & Ogawa
2011; Creissels 2024: §6). Nevertheless, the structural and functional
diversity of Impersonal constructions continues to raise fundamental
questions about their definition, identification, and cross-linguistic
comparability.
A major challenge to a systematic cross-linguistic comparison of ICs
stems from differences in how they are defined (Malchukov & Siewierska
2011). These definitional difficulties become particularly apparent
when contrasting structural and communicative-functional approaches to
impersonality (Siewierska 2008), which emphasize its different
properties and do not necessarily identify the same range of
construction types.
>From a structural, subject-oriented perspective, impersonals are
characterized by the absence of a fully referential verbal argument,
exhibiting the morphosyntactic properties associated with canonical
subjects in a language (Siewierska 2008: 116). Constructions
traditionally classified as impersonal on structural grounds may
include those lacking canonically coded subjects, (1), those involving
expletive elements, (2), and those in which canonical subject coding
alternates with a non-canonical coding pattern, (3a–b).
(1) Latin (Italic, Indo-European)
me civitatis morum piget
1sg.acc society(f).gen.sg moral(m).gen.pl loathe.prs.3sg
‘I loathe the morals of the society.’ lit. ‘It irks me of the morals
of the society’ (Sall. Iug. 4, 9)
(2) French (Italic, Indo-European; p.k.)
Il est entré une fille.
3sg.m be.prs.3sg enter.ptcp.pst.sg.m idf.f.sg girl(f).sg
‘There came in a girl.’
(3) Polish (Slavic, Indo-European; p.k.)
a.
Woda zalała piwnicę.
water(f).nom.sg flood.pfv.pst.3sg.f basement(f).acc.sg
‘The water flooded the basement.’
b.
Zalało piwnicę wodą.
flood.pfv.pst.3sg.n basement(f).acc.sg water(f).ins.sg
‘The basement got flooded.’ lit. ‘It flooded the basement with water.’
The communicative-functional approach emphasizes a different dimension
of impersonal constructions, conceptualizing it as a strategy of event
construal, where agent participants logically involved in an event are
backgrounded, defocused, or even excluded from its representation.
This perspective includes, among others, constructions expressing
indefinite or generalized human reference, (4) (see Siewierska 2011;
Deringer et al. 2015) and impersonal passives, (5) (see Blevins 2003;
Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019: 84–89).
(4) Italian (Italic, Indo-European; p.k.)
Suonano al campanello
ring.prs.3pl at.def.m.sg doorbell(m).sg
‘Someone is ringing at the doorbell.’ lit. ‘They are ringing at the
doorbell.’
(5) Turkish (Oghuz, Turkic)
Balkondan aşağı düşülebilir.
balcony.abl down fall.pass.pot.aor.3sg
‘One could fall down from the balcony.’ (adapted from Göksel &
Kerslake 2005: 151)
Neither approach is, however, without methodological limitations. The
structural approach offers more readily identifiable morphosyntactic
diagnostics for cross-linguistic comparison, including case marking,
subject agreement, expletive elements, or even the absence of an overt
subject. Nevertheless, its reliance on the notion of subjecthood
presents methodological challenges as the defining properties and
morphosyntactic realization of subjects vary across languages. The
identification of ICs thus depends on language-specific criteria
rather than on a consistent set of cross-linguistically applicable
diagnostics (cf. Creissels 2024: 244). This raises the broader
question of whether constructions traditionally classified as
impersonal on structural grounds constitute a coherent
cross-linguistic category.
The communicative-functional approach, by contrast, is not constrained
by structural definitions of subjecthood and thus captures a broader
range of phenomena associated with impersonality. However, it is more
difficult to operationalize consistently in typological research, as
agent defocusing may become apparent only in a broader
discourse-pragmatic context (Siewierska 2008). This context dependence
complicates the development of consistent criteria for identifying and
comparing impersonal constructions across languages.
A different approach to the heterogeneity of ICs is developed by
Malchukov & Ogawa (2011: 42–43), who investigate the systematic
relationship between their functional varieties and grammatical
encoding. Using a semantic map approach, they show that different
functional varieties of impersonal constructions correlate with
particular coding strategies, while recurrent overlaps in these
strategies reveal connections between functional domains. Their
approach thus provides a way of capturing the internal organization of
the impersonal domain, but leaves unresolved the methodological
challenges of identifying impersonal constructions on the basis of
consistent cross-linguistic criteria.
Creissels (2024: §6) addresses this methodological challenge by
proposing a promising definition of ICs based on the predominant
alignment patterns of individual languages. He defines impersonals in
terms of violations of the Obligatory Coding Principle. On this
account, ICs are exceptional coding frames that lack a slot for an
A-coded participant in predominantly A-aligned languages. Conversely,
anti-impersonals (cf. Lazard 1985) constitute their structural
counterpart in predominantly P-aligned languages, lacking a slot for a
P-coded participant. Their identification thus depends on departures
from a language’s predominant argument-coding patterns rather than on
morphosyntactic properties alone.
While providing a language-independent criterion for cross-linguistic
comparison of impersonals, this definition excludes traditionally
recognized types, notably R-impersonals with indefinite or generalized
reference and regular TAM-governed coding alternations, such as
Russian debitives (mne pojti ‘I should go’). Distinguishing
exceptional violations from systematic alignment variation (e.g.,
split-S systems) also remains difficult. Without quantitative corpus
evidence, assessing whether such violations are sufficiently marginal
to qualify as (anti-)impersonals inevitably involves some
arbitrariness (Creissels 2024: 243).
Beyond their definition and identification, the cross-linguistic
comparison of ICs raises questions about the interplay of argument
coding, verb semantics, argument structure, referentiality, and
information structure. Addressing these questions requires more
systematic language-specific descriptions as a basis for typological
generalizations, particularly given that ICs may lack systematic
treatment even within individual languages (Luinetti 2025).
The workshop aims:
 - to reassess existing definitions and diagnostics of ICs, with
particular attention to their applicability across languages with
different grammatical structures and alignment systems;
 - to investigate the interplay between argument coding, lexical
semantics, argument structure, referential interpretation, and
information structure, examining which properties are
cross-linguistically recurrent and which are language-specific;
 - to bring together language-specific, comparative, and theoretically
oriented studies from diverse languages and language families to
identify directions for a more systematic account of impersonality
within and across languages;
We invite language-specific, comparative, and typological studies of
ICs, particularly in underrepresented non-European languages. Topics
include, but are not limited to:
 - Definition of ICs: Can the absence of a canonically coded argument
serve as a reliable cross-linguistic diagnostic for ICs? Are
constructions excluded under narrower definitions, such as
R-impersonals or TAM-governed alternations, better treated as separate
comparative categories?
 - Lexical vs. pragmatic ICs: What governs the distribution of
impersonal constructions across different predicates and contexts?
Where impersonal and canonical constructions alternate, when is the
choice between them semantically and pragmatically neutral (lexical
ICs), and when does it carry distinct semantic or discourse-pragmatic
implications (pragmatic ICs)?
 - ICs, argument structure and non-canonical argument marking: What
distinguishes ICs from constructions involving non-canonical argument
marking more generally? How are semantic roles mapped onto grammatical
relations in ICs?
 - ICs and information structure: Can ICs be associated with sentence
focus or discourse-new referents? Does this relationship hold across
languages?
 - ICs, voice and valency: How do morphologically coded impersonals
and verb-uncoded impersonals (flexivalency/lability) relate to passive
constructions and other valency-changing operations?
 - ICs and alignment: Does the formal symmetry between impersonals
found in obligatory A-coding languages and anti-impersonals found in
obligatory P-coding languages extend to their functional properties,
and if so, to what extent?
 - ICs and expletives: Are expletives genuine syntactic subjects? How
do expletives    differ from referential or vague-reference subject
pronouns? Which diagnostics identify subjecthood in ICs?
 - ICs in diachrony: How do ICs  arise, change, disappear and
re-appear? What recurrent pathways of change link different types of
ICs?
References:
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. & Dixon, R.M.W. & Masayuki, Onishi (eds.).
2001. Non-canonical marking of subjects and objects. Amsterdam /
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2023. Oblique subjects in Germanic: Their status,
history and reconstruction. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bauer, Brigitte. 2000. Archaic syntax in Indo-European: The spread of
transitivity in Latin and French. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
doi.org/10.1515/9783110825992
Blevins, J. P. 2003. Passives and impersonals. Journal of Linguistics
39(3): 473–520.
Creissels, Denis. 2007. Impersonal and anti-impersonal constructions:
A typological approach. Ms., University of Lyon.
Creissels, Denis, 2024. Transitivity, valency and voice, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, doi.org/10.1093/9780198899594.001.0001
Deringer, Lisa & Gast, Volker & Haas, Florian & Rudolf, Olga. 2015.
Impersonal uses of the second person singular and generalized empathy:
An exploratory corpus study of English, German and Russian. In Laure
Gardelle & Sandrine Sorlin (eds.), The Pragmatics of personal
pronouns, 311–334. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.171.15der
Eythórsson, Thórhallur. 2000. Dative vs. nominative: Changes in quirky
subjects in Icelandic. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and
Phonetics 8: 27–44.
Göksel, Aslı & Kerslake, Celia. 2005. Turkish: A comprehensive
grammar. New York: Routledge.
Kibort, Anna. 2001. The Polish passive and impersonal in Lexical
Mapping Theory. In Miriam Butt & Tracy Holloway King (eds.),
Proceedings of the LFG01 Conference, 163–183. University of Hong Kong,
Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Lazard, Gilbert. 1985. Anti-impersonal verbs, transitivity continuum
and the notion of transitivity. In Hansjakob Seiler & Gunter
Brettschneider (eds.), Language invariants and mental operations,
115–123. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Luinetti, Diego, 2025. The emergence of the hoi epêlthe ptareîn
impersonal construction in Ancient Greek. Journal of Historical Syntax
9(13): 1–40. doi.org/10.18148/hs/2025.v9i14.243
Luinetti, Diego. 2026 (forthc.). How impersonal constructions come
about: A focus on the diachrony of Ancient Greek dokeî. Transaction
of the Philological Society.
Malchukov, Andrej & Ogawa, Akio, 2011. Towards a typology of
impersonal constructions: A semantic map approach. In Andrej Malchukov
& Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic
perspective, 17–54. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124.02mal
Malchukov, Andrej & Siewierska, Anna. 2011. Introduction. In Andrej
Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.) Impersonal constructions: A
cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John
Benjamins. doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124
Malchukov, Andrej & Siewierska, Anna (eds.). 2011. Impersonal
constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam /
Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124
Schlund, Katrin. 2020. Active transitive impersonals in Slavic and
beyond: A parallel corpus analysis. Russian Linguistics 44. 39–58.
doi.org/10.1007/s11185-020-09221-2
Seržant, Ilja & Kulikov, Leonid (eds.). 2013. The Diachronic typology
of non-canonical subjects. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
doi.org/10.1075/slcs.140
Siewierska, Anna, 2008. Introduction: Impersonalization from a
subject-centred vs. agent-centred perspective. Transactions of the
Philological Society 106(2): 115–137 [Special issue on Impersonal
Constructions in Grammatical Theory, guest-edited by A. Siewierska].
Siewierska, Anna, (ed.). 2008. Transactions of the Philological
Society 106(2), Special issue on Impersonal Constructions in
Grammatical Theory.
Siewierska, Anna. 2011. Overlap and complementarity in reference
impersonals: Man-constructions vs. third person plural-impersonals in
the languages of Europe. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.)
Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective, 57-90.
Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
doi.org/10.1075/slcs.124.03sie
Sigurðardóttir, Sigríður S. & Eythórsson, Thórhallur. 2022. The
emergence of oblique subjects: Oblique-case substitution and shift in
anticausative strategy in Modern Icelandic. Working Parpers in
Scandinavian Syntax 107: 47-82.
Zúñiga, Fernando & Seppo Kittilä. 2019. Grammatical voice. [Cambridge
Textbooks in Linguistics]. Cambridge: CUP.
doi.org/10.1017/9781316671399

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