Emerging Grammatical Categories 2026

02-04 novembre 2026 (Fontainebleau, France)

Date : 02-04 novembre 2026
Lieu : Fontainebleau, France
Contact : Patrick Caudal <patrick.caudal@cnrs.fr>
Site de l’événement : https://emgraca2026.sciencesconf.org/
Date de soumission : 10 août 2026

Modalités de soumission : Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than 2 pages (including examples and references). Please use a 12-point font, with reasonable margins. Submissions must be in PDF format and written in English, and should be sent to emgraca2026@ and patrick.caudal@cnrs.fr and rozenn.guerois@cnrs.fr. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by the scientific committee.

Calendrier :

Soumission des résumés : 10 août 2026
Notification aux auteurs : 1er septembre 2026

Format de communication :

The workshop will welcome up to 15 oral presentations (20 minutes + 10 minutes discussion), plus two plenary talks given by our invited speakers.

Conférence invité : Kilu von Prince (U. Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

Argumentaire :

We invite submissions for EmGraCa 2026, a workshop dedicated to the investigation of emerging grammatical categories, with a particular focus on categories that have only relatively recently been identified, theorized, or systematically compared across languages. The workshop aims to bring together researchers working on underexplored or newly conceptualized domains of grammar, especially those grounded in semantic distinctions that challenge or refine traditional typologies. As the title of the workshop suggests, we hope that it will be the first occurrence in a future series of events.

Recent decades have seen the recognition and growing study of several such categories, and raise important questions about their delineation and interplay. More generally, this research has focused on their semantic, pragmatic, morphosyntactic, and discursive properties, as well as about pathways of grammaticalization and cross-linguistic comparability.

Thématiques :

Categories of interest can relate to any (relatively) recently identified, major semantically-based grammatical category, such as
– Apprehensives / apprehensionals / evitatives / frustratives (Lichtenberk 1995, Vuillermet 2018, Fuentes 2022, AnderBois & Dąbkowski, 2021, 2025, Faller, Vuillermet & Schultze-Berndt, to appear)
– Avertives (Kuteva 1998, Overall 2007, Kuteva et al. 2019, Caudal 2023)
– Miratives (DeLancey 2001, AnderBois 2018, Petersen 2019)
– Markers of mistaken belief, false inference, or misperception (Caudal 2023, McGregor 2024)
– Iamitives (Olsson 2013, Dahl 2022)
– Epistemic stance/commitment (Mansfield 2019)
– Egophoricity (San Roque, Floyd & Norcliffe 2018)
– Language-specific categories broadly relating to expressivity (in the sense of e.g. Potts 2007, Gutzman 2015, 2019, Bross 2021, Caso et al. 2021…) and subjectivity (especially of a modal/evidential nature)

We welcome contributions addressing (but not limited to) the following themes:
– Descriptive and typological studies of emerging grammatical categories
– Diachronic pathways and grammaticalization processes leading to these categories
– Areal and genealogical distribution of emerging categories
– Formal modeling (semantic, syntactic, or computational) of these categories, especially at the morphosyntax/semantics and semantics/pragmatics interface
– Interaction with modality, evidentiality, tense-aspect, and polarity
– Corpus-based and experimental approaches
– Methodological and theoretical issues in identifying and defining new grammatical categories
– Comparisons with more established categories and implications for linguistic theory

Objectifs : 

EmGraCa seeks to:
Foster dialogue across subfields (typology, semantics, pragmatics, historical linguistics)
Clarify the status and boundaries of emerging grammatical categories
Encourage cross-linguistic comparison and theoretical integration
Provide a platform for new empirical findings and conceptual advances – if the workshop is successful, we hope it will be reiterated in future years.

For inquiries, please contact: patrick.caudal@cnrs.fr

We look forward to your contributions and to advancing the study of emerging grammatical categories together.

Comité d’organisation : Patrick Caudal (LLF, CNRS & U. Paris-Cité), Rozenn Guérois (LLACAN, CNRS), Anton Granvik (University of Helsinki)

Comités scientifique :

Daniel Altshuler (Oxford University)
Scott AnderBois (Brown University)
James Bednall (A.N.U. / the Charles Darwin University)
Patrick Caudal (LLF, UMR CNRS 7110, CNRS & Université Paris-Cité)
Agnès Celle (ALTAE, Université Paris-Cité)
Anton Granvik (the University of Helsinki)
Rozenn Guérois (LLACAN, UMR CNRS 8135)
David-Felipe Guerrero-Beltran (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)
Alexandre François (LATTICE, UMR CNRS 8094, ENS & U. Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Stefan Kaufmann (University of Connecticut)
Rob Mailhammer (the University of Western Sydney)
Maïa Ponsonnet (DDL, UMR CNRS 5596, CNRS & Université Lumière Lyon 2)
Kilu von Prince (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)
Louis de Saussure (Université de Neuchâtel)
Eva Schultze-Berndt (the University of Manchester)
Beatrice Serafino-Pahonțu (SEDYL & LLF, UMR CNRS 8202 & 7110, INALCO)