[Ura-list] Antipassive in Uralic languages -- Call for abstracts

[Mus Nikolett]

Dear Colleagues,

Please find below the call for abstracts for the workshop "Antipassive in
Uralic languages", co-organized by the Department of Finno-Ugric Studies,
Eötvös Loránd University and the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics.

Best regards,

Nikolett Mus

*************************************************
*Antipassive in Uralic languages*


*Call for abstracts*
The Department of Finno-Ugric Studies, Eötvös Loránd University and the
Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics announce this call for a workshop
on antipassive constructions in the Uralic languages.

The workshop will take place on *January 27*, 2022 and will be held as a
fully virtual event.


*Theoretical background*
A prototypical transitive event has traditionally been defined as a
dynamic, concrete event where a volitionally acting agent acts on a patient
that is directly affected as a result of this action. Thus, a sentence
pattern that prototypically depicts such an event, and is therefore
considered to represent active voice, has to consist of three constituents:
an Agent (NP) as the subject of the sentence, a bivalent transitive verb as
its predicate and a Patient (NP) as the direct object of the verb. In other
words, the construction displays a transitive verb with two arguments. This
type of transitive sentence can be related to two intransitive patterns
with marked versions of the same verbal lexeme only preserving one of its
arguments, the other one being demoted. A passive sentence is one where the
Patient of the underlying transitive sentence becomes the subject of the
sentence, remaining the sole argument of the predicate, whereas an
antipassive sentence retains the Agent of the transitive sentence in the
role of the subject, being similarly the sole argument of the predicate.
Hence, in both cases, the verbal predicate becomes syntactically
intransitive. Further common features for the two derived patterns are that
in both of them, the verb gets marked for the respective pattern (viz.
passive or antipassive voice), and the non-argumental (aka adjunctival)
constituent is backgrounded. The demotion of these adjuncts can be partial
(they appear in an oblique form) or total (they are omitted altogether). It
should be noted that the verbal marker that differentiates either of these
constructions from their active counterpart can, but is not necessarily
supposed to, only serve this function in the language.
In order, then, to be a genuine antipassive construction, the following
four criteria must be met (cf. Heaton 2017): 1. The antipassive clearly has
a corresponding unmarked or less marked bivalent active transitive
construction; 2. There is an overt marker for antipassivity; 3. The agent
of the transitive construction is preserved, while the patient is either
inexpressible or optionally displayed in the form of an oblique phrase; 4.
The antipassive construction is intransitive (no direct object is possible
alongside its predicate).
The workshop welcomes contributions that address, among others, the
following questions:

    1. Does the examined Uralic language have antipassive constructions at
all?
    2. In antipassive constructions, can the Patient be expressed in the
sentence by an oblique form or is it necessarily omitted?
    3. Is the marker of antipassivity special (dedicated to this function
only) in the language or does it fulfil other tasks, too? If it does, which
ones?
    4. Can it be proven that the marker appears just for indicating
antipassivity and not some (other) modification of the verbal meaning (such
as reflexivity, reciprocity, etc.)?
    5. Is the speakers’ choice between antipassive constructions and active
transitive ones optional or are there any syntactic, semantic, pragmatic
circumstances or stylistic considerations that require using them?
    6. Can we form any hypotheses about the origin and/or rise of
antipassive constructions in the given language?

The Organizers


*Literature*Janic, Katarzyna and Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena 2021. The
multifaceted nature of the antipassive construction. In Katarzyna Janic and
Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.), Antipassive: Typology, diachrony, and
related constructions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1–39.
Janic, Katarzyna and Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena 2018. The crosslinguistic
diversity of antipassives: function, meaning and structure. Talk presented
at the 49 th Annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europae, Naples.
Heaton, Raina 2017. A typology of antipassives, with special reference to
Mayan. Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.


*Submissions*
The languages of the workshop are English and/or Russian, nevertheless,
abstracts are expected to be written in English only. In case you wish to
deliver your talk in Russian, please indicate its title in Russian, too.

Presentations will be 30 minutes long followed by a 10-minute discussion
period.

Participants are invited to submit abstracts not later than *September 12,
2021*. Submissions are limited to two per author, with at most one paper
being single authored. Abstracts should not exceed one page (excluding
references, examples, tables, keywords, etc.) and must be set in Times New
Roman with a 12pt font, single spaced having 2,5 cm (1 inch) margins on all
sides.

The abstracts must be sent in pdf format to the address: apur2022 at gmail.com

Abstracts must be anonymous and not reveal the identity of the author(s) in
any way. Please indicate the name, affiliation of the Author(s) and the
title of the abstract in the text of the e-mail.

All abstracts will be peer-reviewed and the notification of acceptance will
be sent out by mid-October 2021.

Note that the conference is planned to be held online, irrespective of the
pandemic situation at that time.

*Important dates*
Deadline for submission of abstracts: *12 September 2021*
Notification of acceptance: *mid-October 2021*
Workshop: *27 January 2022*

Registration fee: free.
Contact: musn at nytud.hu (Nikolett Mus)

*Organizing committee:*
Ferenc Havas
Erika Asztalos
András Czentnár
Nikolett F. Gulyás
Laura Horváth
Nikolett Mus
Ditta Szabó
Bogáta Timár

-- 

Nyelvtudományi Kutatóközpont
Research Center for Linguistics
(Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

H-1068 Budapest
Benczúr u. 33
tel: 36-1-351-0413
fax: 36-1-322-9297
musn at nytud.hu <mus.nikolett at nytud.hu>
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