Full Title: Minor Sentence Types
Theme: Their form and its impact on grammar

Date: 04-Sep-2025 - 04-Sep-2025
Location: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Contact Person: Jakob Maché
Meeting Email: [email protected]

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax; Typology

Call Deadline: 30-Mar-2025

The large bulk of research in syntax and sentential semantics focuses on assertive declarative clauses,
information seeking interrogative clauses, and, to a much lesser extent, imperatives. A key concept for
the understanding of word order variation and prosodic prominence was introduced by Roberts (2012)
and Ginzburg (1996) in form of the Question Under Discussion (QUD). As has been shown on vari-
ous occasions, different word order permutations and stress patterns express different focus placement.
Focused constituents typically occupy a prominent position in the clause or exhibit more prominent
prosodic features. The placement and the prosodic properties of focussed constituents is determined by
QUD.
To gain a deeper understanding of these major sentence types and their interaction with the discourse,
it is often productive to analyse the internal structure of minor sentence types. Minor sentence types
frequently differ from major ones in that they (i) lack features that are characteristic of major sentence
types such as overt subjects, finite verbs—or verbs all together; (ii) exhibit unusual word order and/or
prosody, as seen in English exclamatives (What small hands!), (iii) or they exhibit segmental material,
such as particles or markers, that does not occur in other sentence types.
Among the minor sentence types are those identified by König and Siemund (2007), N. Evans (2007),
Altmann, Meibauer, and Steinbach (2013), Finkbeiner and Meibauer (2015b) and Geurts (2019:13–15).
These are listed below and supplemented here by further types:

1. Imperatives and prohibitives lacking overt subjects in many languages (cf. Schmerling 1982, Kauf-
mann 2012, Condoravdi and Lauer 2012), also in Meithei (Tibeto-Burman, cf. Chelliah 1997) .
2. Exclamatives in many Indo-European languages characterised by unusual intonation and/or word
order (Michaelis and Lambrecht 1996, Zanuttini and Portner 2003, Trotzke and Giannakidou
2024).
3. Optatives in Germanic (cf. Grosz 2012, Grosz 2013) and in Meithei (Tibeto-Burman), (cf. Chelliah
1997).
4. Rhetorical questions (cf. Dehé and Braun 2019, Farkas 2020).
5. Deliberative self-adressed questions.
6. Other non-canonical questions (cf. Trotzke 2023).
7. Echo questions A: I tell you he is a braggart – B: He is what? (cf. Reis 2015, Beck and Reis
2018).
8. Declarative questions in Germanic languages (cf. Gunlogson 2001).
9. What if questions (cf. Bledin and Rawlins 2019, Li and Liu 2023).
10. Directive root infinitives in Germanic and elsewhere (cf. Reis 1985, Schwabe 1994, Reis 1995,
Gärtner 2013, Gärtner 2014, Gärtner 2017) and wh-root infinitives (cf. Reis 2003)
11. Non-finite presentatives/mad magazin sentences: Him play the piano? Ludicrous! (cf. Akmajian
1984, Lambrecht 1990, Fernández-Pena and Pérez-Guerra 2024).
12. Verbless utterances such as:
(a) Verbless directives in West-Germanic languages: Off with his head! (cf. Jackendoff and
Pinker 2005:220, Jacobs 2008:22, Wilder 2008, Ørsnes 2011) and in Australian languages
such negated directive infintives in Ngardi (Pama-Nyungan, cf. Ennever 2021:382–383, 645,
717).
(b) Directive dative constructions in Russian: khui vojne ‘penis.NOM war.DAT= f*ck war’.
(c) Nominal sentences in Afro-Asiatic languages including Arabic, Biblical Hebrew (cf. Watson
2002), Egyptian Coptic and other (cf. Callender 1985), Chadic such as Mina (cf. Frajzyngier,
Johnston, and Edwards 2005:273–285) and Wandala (Frajzyngier 2012:317–330). Russian
also exhibits such structures as does Hungarian (Uralic), Warlmanpa (Pama-Nyungan) spo-
ken in Australia (cf. Browne 2024:401–403), Mapuche (Araucarian) spoken in Chile (cf.
Smeets 2007:143–145) and other languages (cf. Bertinetto, Ciucci, and Creissels 2025).
(d) Non-canonical predications Richtig gut, das Papier! ‘Really good, that paper!’ (cf. Finkbeiner
and Meibauer 2015a).
13. Main clauses that display characteristics of embedded clauses (insubordination), as suggested by
N. Evans (2007) and N. D. Evans and Watanabe (2016) such as:
(a) Verb forms that typically occur only in dependent clauses, such as the subjunctive in certain
languages (cf. Wiltschko 2014:154–156).
(b) Word order variations, such as verb-final sentences in Dutch and German.
(c) Sentences headed by complementisers.
(d) Other lack of marking typical of main clauses, such as in Ngardi (cf. Ennever 2021:677)
14. Short answers and response particles derived from deictic adverbs, e.g. Portuguese sim, French
oui, Polish tak or from finite forms/echo answers as Portuguese tá attested accross many phyla (cf.
Ginzburg 2012:217–265, Krifka 2013, Wiltschko 2017, Fang 2025).
15. Other non-sentential utterances: hm, huh in English (cf. Ginzburg 2012:217–265) and West-
African Atlantic-Congo languages (cf. Painter 1975, Dingemanse, Torreira, and Enfield 2013).
16. Vocatives (Zwicky 1974, Ladd 1978, Portner 2007, Hill 2007, Hill 2022, Portner 2007 , Wiltschko
2014:244–245, Maché 2020, Maché 2025).
17. Evaluative or expessive “vocatives” prevalent in many European languages such as English you id-
iot! or Portuguese seu idiota!‘POSS.3S idiot’ (cf. Svennung 1958, Rauh 2004, Espinal 2013:120–
127, d’Avis and Meibauer 2013).
18. Morphologically marked alarm calls in Ancient Greek Io Bacchus! ‘PRT Bacchus.NOM’, Middle
High German fiur=â ‘fire=PRT’ and Early New High German Feind=io ‘enemy=PRT’ (cf. Grimm
1850:112)
19. Presentatives such as French Voilà Liliane ‘Here is Liliane’ and attention getters such as Spanish
Mira ‘look’ (cf. Zanuttini 2017, Van Olmen and Tantucci 2022).
20. Greetings and other formulaic expressions like thanking (cf. Ginzburg 2012:74–80, Geurts (2019:13–
15), Leemann et al. 2024).
21. Exclamative interjections and evaluative expressions like Wow! or Oh God! (cf. Ginzburg 2014,
Sieberg 2016)
22. Non-inflectional constructions widely known from comics and chats such as German *grins*
‘smile.STEM’ (cf.Bücking and Rau 2013)

Questions of interest may involve, but are not limited to, various aspects of the relationship between
form and meaning, as illustrated below:

1. What is the role of finiteness in determining the illocutionary force? Are certain speech acts
dependent on the presence or absence of finiteness (cf. Nikolaeva 2007, Truckenbrodt 2006, Klein
2008)?
2. What is the role of the QUD in minor sentence types? Is it necessary to assume QUDs to account
for prosodic prominence and/or word order variation?
3. Do minor speech acts or sentence types involve a communicative intention or deontic speech act
operator as proposed by Truckenbrodt (2006:268–278)? (e.g. assertion as SPKR wants ADDR to
add p to the common ground, questions as SPKR wants ADDR to extend to the common ground
with respect to p or ¬p)
4. Which impact does the marked form of minor sentence type have on what kind of at-issue and/or
non-at-issue meaning it may convey (cf. Potts 2005, Potts 2015)?
5. What is the underlying syntactic representation of defective minor sentence types? Is their any
empirical evidence for covert verbs, subjects or matrix predicates?
6. Is there any empirical evidence to determine which approach to the relationship between sentence
type and illocutionary force is more adequate: correspondence approach or derivational approach
as proposed by Reis (1999) and Meibauer (2013)?
This workshop follows the annual HPSG-colloquium but warmly welcomes contributions from any
theoretical framework including constraint-based theories such as GPSG, HPSG, LFG, CG, CxG and
derivational approaches such as Minimalism. Submissions related to the application of theoretical lin-
guistics in NLP, as relevant to the workshop’s theme, are also encouraged. The workshop aims to provide
a forum for proponents of diverse theoretical approaches who are open to learning from one another.
This one day long workshop is going to be held as an hybrid event welcoming submissions for in-
presence and online participation.
Submissions should be two pages in length, including data, figures, and references. They must be
submitted in PDF format and should not include the authors’ names. Authors are also asked to avoid
self-references. All abstracts must be submitted by 30th March, 2025, via EasyChair.
https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=hpsg2025
• Deadline for abstracts: 30th March 2025
• Notification of acceptance: 30th April 2025
• Date: 4th September 2025 (preceded by the HPSG colloquium on 2nd–3rd September)
• Invited speakers: Jonathan Ginzburg (Laboratoire de linguistique formelle, Université de Paris)
• Conference proceedings submission: 15th October 2025
• Workshop webpage: https://dkaramasov.github.io/hpsg2025/
• Email contact/local organizer: jakob dot mache ett letras dot ulisboa dot pt

A call for contributions to the proceedings will be issued after the conference. The proceedings are
going to be an indexed publication; the contributions will undergo a separate round of reviews. The
proceedings of previous conferences are available at: https://proceedings.hpsg.xyz/

Program Committee

• Oleg Belyaev (Lomonosov Moscow State
University)
• Diti Bhadra (University of Minnesota)
• Cleo Condoravdi (Stanford University)
• Peter Culicover
• Marcel den Dikken (Hungarian Research
Centre for Linguistics/Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa)
• Masha Esipovna (Bar-Ilan University)
• Renate Finkbeiner (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz)
• Jan Fließbach (Universität Potsdam)
• Hans-Martin Gärtner (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics)
• Bart Geurts (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
• Jonathan Ginzburg (Laboratoire de linguistique formelle, Université de Paris)
• Eleni Gregoromichelaki (Göteborgs universitet)
• Bozhil Hristov (Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski)
• Łukasz J˛edrzjowski (Universitetet i Agder)
• Beste Kamali (University of Amsterdam)
• Jongbok Kim (Kyung Hee University Seoul)
• Espen Klævik-Pettersen (Universitetet Agder)
• Manfred Krifka (Humboldt Universität Berlin)
• Jess H. K. Law (University of California Santa Cruz)
• Andy Lücking (Goethe Universität Frankfurt)
• Victor Manfredi (Univerity of Boston)
• Alda Mari (Institut Nicod)
• Rui Marques (Universidade de Macau/Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa)
• André Meinunger (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Berlin)
• Joanna Nykiel
• Edgar Onea-Gaspar (Karl Franzens Universität Graz)
• Kilu von Prince (Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf)
• Oliver Schallert (Friedrich Alexander Universität Erlangen)
• Heiko Seeliger (Universität zu Köln)
• Vesela Simeonova (Karl Franzens Universität Graz)
• Tue Trinh (Univerza v Novi Gorici)
• Andreas Trotzke (Universität Konstanz)
• Giuseppe Varaschin (Humboldt Universität Berlin)
• Nigel Vincent (The University of Manchester)
• Martina Wiltschko (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

References can be found on the official call on the website.