37.3543, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 – Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed: Non-Finite Verb Forms in Language Contact and Grammatical Description (Slovakia)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3543. Wed 28 Oct 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3543, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 – Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed: Non-Finite Verb Forms in Language Contact and Grammatical Description (Slovakia)

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Date: 26-Oct-2026
From: Jana Kocková [jana.kockova at slu.cas.cz]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2027 – Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed: Non-Finite Verb Forms in Language Contact and Grammatical Description


Workshop at SLE 2027 – Something Old, Something New, Something
Borrowed: Non-Finite Verb Forms in Language Contact and Grammatical
Description
Short Title: SLE 2027
Theme: Non-finite verb forms in language contact and grammatical
description

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;
Morphology; Syntax; Translation

Submission Deadline: 10-Nov-2026

Call: We kindly ask you to send provisional abstracts up to 100 words
excluding references by November 10, 2026, to:
Markus.Giger at ff.cuni.cz
Jana.Kockova at slu.cas.cz
If the workshop is approved, authors will be asked to submit revised
500-word abstracts according to the SLE guidelines.
Workshop Description:
Non-finite verb forms – converbs, participles, infinitives and verbal
nouns, as defined by  Ylikoski (2003) – presuppose the existence of
finite verb forms, but not vice versa. Since they  typically serve to
express secondary predications, non-finite forms frequently compete
with finite verb forms, i.e. with finite clauses.
In many languages, particularly Indo-European ones, non-finite forms
cannot function as the  sole predicate of an independent clause;
instead, they primarily fulfil other syntactic  functions, such as
those of attributes or adverbials (Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1999: 147).
Constructions with non-finite verb forms are therefore often
ambiguous, since some features  of full predication remain
unexpressed, e.g. the relation to the logical subject, the relation to
the main predication, or temporal reference.
Non-finite forms are transitional by nature – Haspelmath (1995) treats
them as instances of  “word-class-changing inflection” – which makes
them difficult to delineate precisely. The categories that
characterise them can be defined in terms of a cluster of properties
(Bisang  2007), and non-finite forms, especially infinitives and
converbs, are often defined negatively,  by the absence of certain
features, esp. infinitives and converbs (Kocková 2022: 25). Finally,
the distinction between finiteness and non-finiteness is not universal
across languages (Bisang 2007: 116).
This makes the competition between finite and non-finite verb forms
particularly interesting  in situations of language contact:
non-finite forms may replace finite secondary predicates,  or vice
versa (cf. e.g. Shagal 2017: 170). Non-finite verb forms are thus a
frequent target of  contact-induced innovation, which may take a wide
range of forms – from the extension of  existing functions and the
reactivation of older forms to the direct calquing based on the  model
of from another language.
The workshop aims to identify and describe the various manifestations
of language contact  in the domain of non-finite verb forms. Contact
influence in this domain has mostly been  studied in isolation, either
with respect to a single recipient language or from the perspective
of a single source language, such as Latin. The workshop seeks to
bring these strands together  and to approach the topic from three
angles: (i) spontaneous influence, (ii) deliberate change,  and (iii)
translation as a specific type of language contact.
(i)     Spontaneous contact-induced change presupposes either
bilingualism or a dominant  language. According to Thomason (2001:
70), for instance, the spontaneous adoption of  participial
constructions requires intensive contact with widespread bilingualism.
(ii)    Language contact can, however, also be intentional. Deliberate
change is of particular  interest because it has the potential to run
counter to the established probability hierarchies  of contact-induced
change (Thomason 2007). In intentional contact between elaborated
varieties, non-finite constructions may be adopted even in the absence
of bilingualism or a  dominant language. Although intentional and
unintentional influence often overlap, the effort  to bring the
features of one language closer to those of another is sometimes
directly  observable in historical sources (see e.g. Štúr 1846: 131 on
the past active participle).
(iii)   Translation plays a special role in language contact. In many
languages, non-finite  constructions are largely confined to the
written language, as a hallmark of non-spontaneous, planned discourse.
Translations thus become a domain in which cross-linguistic
differences  in the use of non-finite verb forms come to the surface,
whether intentionally or not – ranging  from the search for suitable
equivalents in the target language to the adaptation of target-
language constructions to the source language or to another model
language.
In European languages, such influence can be traced from the earliest
written records: Greek  shaped Latin (Coleman 1975) and Church
Slavonic (Růžička 1958, 1961); Latin influenced  the syntax of many
European languages (Blatt 1957; Cornillie & Drinka 2019;), e.g. Old
English (Scheler 1961; Timofeeva 2010) and Italian (Greco 2019);
later, French, German and  Russian served as models (Dvořák 1978;
Hüttl-Folter 1996; Giger 2008, Danylenko 2019).  Such influence may be
direct or indirect, as in the case of Latin influence on English via
French  or on Czech via German, or of Greek influence via Church
Slavonic and Church Slavonic  influence via Russian. Contact can,
however, also provoke negative reactions – deliberate  avoiding of
language contact – in the form of purism (see e.g. Subotić 1984 and
Stanković  1996 on Serbian). In some cases, finally, it is difficult
to determine whether an innovation  results from the influence of a
particular language or from a parallel development  independent of
contact, motivated, for example, by natural language-internal
tendencies  (Kuhn 1972: 206; Shagal 2017: 189).
Non-finite verb forms have long attracted the attention of linguists.
Apart from the deliberate  adoption of foreign models discussed above
– or, conversely, efforts to counteract it – they  have been a subject
of linguistic theory (Haspelmath 1994; Haspelmath & König 1995; Shagal
2017). A related topic is the treatment of non-finite verb forms in
grammars and language guides, including all associated issues, from
terminology to codification and purism. Czech  grammars of the
National Revival typically presented non-finite forms, especially
participles  and converbs, as a major advantage of Czech over German,
arguing that in this respect Czech  was closer to Latin and Greek.
South Slavic grammarians, on the other hand, differed  depending on
whether they took Vuk Karadžić as their point of reference, which led
to both  more liberal and more purist approaches (Ham 2006).
The workshop therefore invites contributions addressing, among others,
the following  questions:
 – Is the use of non-finite verb forms in a given language variety at
a given time shaped by  a model from another language?
– Can such a model be identified in texts, particularly in
translations? Or, conversely, is  there a tendency to eliminate
structures modelled on a source language?
 – What types of language contact have influenced the development of
non-finite forms,  including specific situations such as pronounced
bilingualism or conscious decisions by  relatively narrow elites
(deliberate change)?
 – How does language contact interact with the internal development of
the target  language’s system?
 – What kinds of effects can be identified in the domain of non-finite
verb forms (borrowing  of lexemes or derivational means, extension of
syntactic functions, etc.)?
 – Is the resulting new pattern stable, i.e. does contact have a
lasting impact on the target  language, or does the innovation
disappear after a while?
 – Is the foreign model explicitly addressed in grammars and/or
textbooks?
 – Conversely, is there a negative attitude towards such contact
(purism), manifested e.g. in  theoretical writings, grammars and
textbooks?
 – How are constructions with non-finite verb forms described in
grammars and textbooks,  and how are they reflected in linguistic
discourse? What terms are used to refer to them,  and on what do
authors base their descriptions and terminology?


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