Important dates

• March 31st, 2018: deadline for abstract submission

Abstracts of no more than one page (plus possibly one additional page for examples), should be submitted via Easychair by March 31st, 2018. Submissions should be anonymous and refrain from self-reference.

• May 31st, 2018: notification of attendance/ deadline for submitting the revised and formatted abstracts (for presenters)
• October 25th-27th, 2018: conference

The conference aims to investigate the shaping of transitivity, argument structure and alignment patterns over time, with particular regard to the evolution of voice systems, (in)transitive alternations, and non-finite syntax. The general goal is to bring together insights from language change, language reconstruction, and language typology in light of current theories of argument realization and the encoding of the argument structure of verbs and clauses. Contributions on general theoretical issues, methodological issues, data collection, and the development of language resources are equally welcome.

We invite abstracts dealing with the following or other related issues:

• Theoretical issues and approaches to the study of transitivity-related phenomena over time
• Methodological issues on data collection and analysis of transitivity-related phenomena over time
• Diachronic changes within voice systems and voice-related categories, (in)transitive alternations, and non-finite syntax in individual languages or across languages
• Cross-linguistic analysis of alignment system evolution
• Diachronic corpus-based investigations of argument structure patterns in individual languages
• The frequency, productivity, reanalysis, and distribution of rival argument structure patterns over time
• Competing motivations behind the distribution of rival synchronic argument structure patterns
• The developments of verbs' argument structure patterns across different languages
• Basic valency orientation, its changes over time in individual languages, the limits and perspectives of its reconstruction in proto-languages
• Sources, reanalysis, and patterns of polysemy of valency changing markers
• The role of language contact in the development of transitivity related phenomena
• Issues in the creation and development of electronic resources (digitalized texts, databases, treebanks, tools etc.) for the study of transitivity related phenomena

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