Full Title: Linguistics Vanguard

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Semantics; Syntax

Call Deadline: 30-Sep-2021

Call for papers:

virtual special issue in Linguistics Vanguard on ”Causal clauses and their diachronic suitability for processes of language change”

Subordinate clauses usually emerge either from a main clause or from another subordinate clause. A well-known case study concerns the emergence conditions of complement clauses headed by a declarative complementizer. In West-Germanic languages they are supposed to have emerged out of relative clauses (Axel-Tober 2009, 2017), however, in many of the Kwa languages of West Africa, verbs of saying occurring in the matrix clause grammaticalized into a complementizer introducing complement clauses (Lord 1993). Less well known is how adverbial clauses come into being and to what extent they can develop into another subordinate clause. The main aim of this virtual special issue is therefore to elaborate on these two questions with the focus on causal clauses and their diachronic suitability for processes of language change. Main questions addressed in the special issue include, but are not limited to, the following issues:

– What is the semantic content of causal clauses giving rise to the input, or the output, of a language change process?

– What is the logical relation between the meanings of causal clauses and other subordinate (adverbial) clauses such that a language change may exist between them?

– What are necessary and sufficient conditions for the origin, or a semantic shift, of causal clauses?

The target of length of each article is 3000-4000 words, according to the journal’s general policy. We are therefore looking for short, concise reports. Accordingly, we expect a short turnaround from submission to publication. Submissions are possible immediately, until September 30th, 2021 at the latest. Each submission is subject to a double-blind peer-review process.

The special issue is guest-edited by Łukasz Jędrzejowski (University of Cologne) & Constanze Fleczoreck (Leibniz University Hannover).

If you are interested in contributing to this special issue, you are kindly requested to send a brief description (approx. 150 words) of the topic to Constanze Fleczoreck (constanze.fleczoreck(at)germanistik.uni-hannover.de) before submitting the paper.

Linguistics Vanguard is an online, multimodal journal published by De Gruyter Mouton. Because the journal is only published online, special collections serve as “virtual special issues” and are linked by shared keywords. Details about the journal can be found at www.degruyter.com/lingvan. Linguistics Vanguard strives for a very quick turn around time from submission to publication.

Inclusion of multimodal content designed to integrate interactive content (including, but not limited to audio and video, images, maps, software code, raw data, hyperlinks to external databases and any other media enhancing the traditional written word) is particularly encouraged. Special collections contributors should follow general submission guidelines for the journal:
https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lingvan/lingvan-overview.xml#callForPapersHeader

Authors will have free access to the entire special collection. There are no publication costs. All authors may post a pdf on their personal website and/or institutional repository a year after publication. In addition, the introduction, which contains a summary of each article, will be fully freely accessible.