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Converbs from a cross-linguistic perspective

Publication

Abstract

Workshop ''Converbs from a cross-linguistic perspective'' topic: In the last twenty years the concept of converbs has been slowly gaining traction and recognition among the wider linguistic community. The term converb is being used in place of several other older terms such as gerunds, deepričastie, adverbial participle, etc.

There have been also various attempts to delimit the phenomenon, e.g. Haspelmath 1995, Ross 2016, that, however, do not agree on all aspects of the definition.

Broadly speaking, converbs can be understood as adverbial verbal forms, though their actual function can vary both across languages and across constructions. We would like to discuss the following issues: - Converbs as dependent adverbial form or a device for clause chaining? - Coordination vs subordination (co-subordination?) - Converbs on the margins (non-prototypical cases of converb usage) - Use of converbs in mono-clausal multiverbal constructions (MMC) - Is the notion of converbs cross-linguistically a useful label? The workshop ''Converbs from a cross-linguistic perspective'' organized by the Prague Descriptive Linguistics group, originally planned to be held physically in April 2020 as part of the annual Linguistics Prague conference at Charles University, has been rescheduled to 2021/07/15 on the Zoom platform.

The start is late evening JST / early morning ET to accommodate all the current participants' needs. We encourage those interested in the topic to apply via e-mail: PDLlinguistics.cz , subject: workshop.

Authors of the accepted papers will be notified by 2021/06/24. The format is to be semi-open with public attendance per speaker's request.

The invited speaker is Florian Siegl - presenting his Constructional Auxilliaries.