Theme session - Forlì, 19th September 2008

The theme session will take place during the
41st ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETAS LINGUISTICA EUROPAEA
Languages in Contrast: Grammar, Translation, Corpora Forlì, 17-20 September 2008.

Topic

Impersonal constructions (such as Latin Me pudet lit. ‘me shames’, German Mich friert lit. ‘me freezes’, or Russian Svetaet ‘It dawns’) have been a traditional topic of research in Indo-European studies (see, e.g., Seefranz-Montag 1984; Lambert 1998; Bauer 2000). Yet this research with a few exceptions (such as Lehmann et. al. 2004) has not been extended cross-linguistically. There seem to be several, different reasons for this all of which cause problems for the cross-linguistic identification of impersonal constructions. The first reason relates to the term impersonal, which has remained controversial and is understood in a variety of different ways by different authors: as pertaining to constructions lacking a subject; as embracing constructions lacking a lexical subject (this allows for treating constructions like It dawns as impersonal); as covering constructions featuring subjects with generic or arbitrary reference rather than definite reference. These uses of the term impersonal are not unrelated though. We will define impersonal constructions broadly as constructions lacking a referential subject, which is consistent with the traditional usage of the term impersonal. The second reason for the lack of cross-linguistic studies of impersonals is that impersonal constructions are rather heterogeneous in terms of the verb types involved. As repeatedly noted in the literature, among the verb types that most commonly pattern impersonally are weather-verbs, psych verbs, as well as verbs used in presentational constructions. Yet, in spite of this heterogeneity, these constructions also show an overlap, which justifies their joint consideration (e.g., the same predicates may be involved in weather constructions and psych predicates: cf. German: Es friert ‘It is cold’ and Mich friert lit. ‘me freezes’). Another reason for the relative neglect of impersonals in typological investigations is that, impersonal verbs can be either basic or derived (impersonal passives; cf. the impersonal participles in –no/-to inPolish; Siewierska 1984). Yet, again both types show a significant overlap: in fact, Givón (2001) regards impersonal construction such as Man sagt in German as a kind of impersonal passive (cf. Khrakovky 1974). Finally, the term impersonal is based on the concept of subject, which may be not readily applicable to languages of different alignment (e.g., ergative languages). However, as noted by Lazard (1998 et passim), similar phenomena can be attested in ergative languages with respect to encoding of the P argument, a construction called “anti-impersonal”. Furthermore, the role of impersonal constructions in the rise of different alignment types has been recently recognized (see, e.g., contributions by Donohue, Mithun, Malchukov to Donohue & Wichmann (eds.) 2008 on the rise of the active-stative languages).

The workshop is intended to bring together scholars interested in various aspects of the structure of impersonal constructions, both in individual languages and cross-linguistically. The discussion of theoretical issues will be appreciated to the extent that it helps to elucidate the empirical data. The topics to be addressed include but are not limited to:

impersonal constructions in individual languages (contributions dealing with less studied languages are particularly welcome)

lexical properties of the constructions (i.e., what types of predicates pattern impersonally)
syntactic properties of these constructions (i.e., does any argument display subject properties)
morphological properties (basic and derived impersonal verbs (impersonal passives)
borderline cases/extensions of impersonal uses (cf. Siewierska 2004 on the impersonal uses of personal pronouns, and personal uses of impersonal pronouns)

cross-linguistic and diachronic studies of impersonal constructions

References

Bauer, B. 2000: Archaic syntax in Indo-European: the spread of transitivity in Latin and French. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Donohue, M. & S. Wichmann (eds). 2008.: Typology of languages with semantic alignment. Oxford University Press.
Givón, T., 2001: Syntax. A Functional-Typological Introduction, vol. 2. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Khrakovsky, V. S. 1974: “Passivnye konstrukcii” [Passive constructions]. In A. A. Kholodovich (ed.) Tipologija passivnyx konstrukcij [Typology of passive constructions], Leningrad: Nauka, 5–45.
Lambert, P.-Y. 1998: L’impersonnel. In J. Feuillet (ed.). Actance et valence dans les Langues de l’Europe. Berlin: Mouton, 295-347.
Lazard, G. 1998: Actancy. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Lehmann, Christian & Shin, Yong-Min & Verhoeven, Elisabeth 2004: Person prominence and relation prominence. On the typology of syntactic relations with particular reference to Yucatec Maya. Erfurt: Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität (ASSidUE, 12) (Second revised edition).
Seefranz-Montag, A. 1984: Subjectless sentences and syntactic change. In: J. Fisiak (ed.). Historical syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 521-533.
Siewierska, A. 1984: The Passive: A Comparative Linguistic Analysis. London: Croom Helm.
Siewierska , A. 2004: Person. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.