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

25-28 août 2027, Košice (Slovaquie)

Date : 25-28 août 2027
Lieu : Košice, Slovakia
Site de l’événement : lien
Date limite de soumission : 10 novembre 2026
Modalités de soumission : We kindly ask you to send provisional abstracts up to 100 words excluding references by November 10, 2026, to: <Markus.Giger@ff.cuni.cz> & <Jana.Kockova@slu.cas.cz>. If the workshop is approved, authors will be asked to submit revised 500-word abstracts according to the SLE guidelines.

Argumentaire :

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?