Workshop at SLE 2026: The Interfaces of the Afroasiatic Verb
Short Title: SLE 59

Date: 26-Aug-2026 - 29-Aug-2026
Location: Osnabrück, Germany
Contact: Anna Kisiel
Contact Email: [email protected]
Meeting URL: https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2026/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Semantics; Syntax
Language Family(ies): Afroasiatic

Submission Deadline: 01-Nov-2025

Organisers: Iris Kamil, Letizia Cerqueglini
Call deadline: 1 November 2025

It is by now well-established that the domains of human language rarely exist on their own: syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and pragmatics regularly interact with one another on what is known as the interfaces of grammar. The study of the various interfaces is vast, and several frameworks of theoretical linguistic research seek to formalize them, for instance Distributed Morphology, Halle & Marantz 199; Parallel Architecture, Jackendoff 1997, 2002, 2007; Magnetic Grammar, D’Alessandro & van Oostendorp 2020; Prosodic Phonology, Nespor & Vogel 1986; i.a.

Afroasiatic (Amazigh, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian/Coptic, Omotic, Semitic) presents a particularly fascinating case for the study of the interfaces. Some branches, e.g., Semitic, feature a higher degree of non-concatenative morphology and thus have less transparency on the interacting domains, while others, e.g., Cushitic, feature a higher degree of concatenative morphology and in effect also more transparency on overt interface phenomena. For instance, Voice-altering morphemes, which are shared across Afroasiatic with the anticausative t- and n- morphemes and the causative s/h/ʾ morpheme(s), regularly interact with a) the lexical properties of derivational roots, b) the TAM features of derived predicates, and c) the intentionality and agentivity domains of their subjects (Kamil & Kilani, accepted).

To illustrate one example, the anticausative t-morpheme is found in its classic syncretic Middle functions of reflexive, autobenefactive, passive, and noncausal in most Afroasiatic languages (except Chadic and Omotic). In Akkadian (East-Semitic), it has furthermore developed pluractional meanings (e.g., in (1) below) and a function as a progression-marker in a series of events (e.g., in (2) below). This syncretism of Voice Morphology is not unique to Akkadian, not even to Semitic, but is for instace found also in Amazigh (Bedar, accepted).

(1) lišān nēr-i=šu kīma birq-i i-t<tan>abriq-Ø
tongue.CSTR light-OBL=his as lightning-OBL 3-PASS<PLUR>flash.IPFV-SG.M
“Whose tongue of light flashes repeatedly like lightning” (BA 5 648:13f., NA)

(2) … a-šâm … a-šâm=u … ēzib … inanna eql-am
… 1SG-buy.PFV … 1SG-buy.PFV=SUBJ … 1SG.leave.PFV … now field-OBL
i-b<ta>qr-Ø=an=ni
3-claim<PROG>PFV-SG.M=VEN=me
“I have bought (a plot of one field for one mina of silver from the soldier PN. When) I bought (the plot of one field,) I left (PN a different plot of two fields.) And now he has laid claim to (take from) me the field. (AbB 4 38:9-13, OB)

Work dedicated to either the synchronic or diachronic encoding of interfacial domains is rare and mostly restricted to formal studies on Semitic (see for instance Doron 2003, Kastner 2020, Cerqueglini 2021, Kamil 2025). We would thus like to invite abstracts for a workshop dedicated to such a study of the interfaces of grammar in Afroasiatic languages. We are particularly interested in the transparency of the overt realization of interfacing domains. Taking again the t-morpheme as an example, while some languages express cross-domain functions within one morpheme (e.g., Akkadian, Kabyle), others maintain a functional and morphological separation (e.g., Cushitic).

In this context, our workshop pursues three core research questions:
1. How are the interfaces of grammar realized overtly or covertly in Afroasiatic?
2. How does the realization of one given interface differ across different branches and languages within branches of Afroasiatic?
3. How do interfacing relationships arise?

We welcome contributions on any interfacing domains within the syntax-semantics-morphology-phonology-pragmatics bracket, addressing, but not limited to, (the interaction of) the following research topics:
- Tense and temporal reference,
- Grammatical and lexical aspect,
- Mood and modality,
- Agentivity and intentionality,
- Voice, valency, and argument structure,
- Phrasal syntax,
- Pragmatic features (e.g., evidentiality, mirativity, illocutionary force).

Contributions may focus on one language, one branch or on the comparison of Afroasiatic branches/languages and present data from both written traditions and/or spoken varieties, ancient or modern. We welcome all linguistic methodologies in order to foster a comparative and cross-disciplinary discussion.

Please send anonymised abstracts of max. 300 words in PDF or Word format to Iris Kamil ([email protected]) and Letizia Cerqueglini ([email protected]).

Call deadline: 1 November 2025

Bibliography:
Bedar, Amazigh. Accepted. Syncretism at the phonology-syntax interface: a case study of the imperfective-middle-passive in Kabyle Berber. Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics.
Cerqueglini, L. 2021. TAM in TMA: Tense-Aspect-Mood in Traditional Muṯallaṯ Arabic. Paper Presented at SOAS, London.
D’Alessandro, R. A. G. & Marc van Oostendorp. 2020. Language Variation and Functional Heads: Magnetic Grammar. Linguistic Analysis 42(3–4). 405–439.
Doron, Edit. 2003. Agency and voice: The semantics of the Semitic templates. Natural language semantics 11(1). 1–67. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023021423453.
Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger (The View from the Building 20), 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. The architecture of the language faculty (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 28). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 2002. Foundations of Language (Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 2007. A Parallel Architecture perspective on language processing. Brain Research 1146. 2–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2006.08.111.
Kamil, Iris. 2025. Intention, Aspect, and Argument Structure. The Morphosyntax and Morphosemantics of the (Old Babylonian) Akkadian Verb. University of Edinburgh PhD Thesis.
Kamil, Iris & Marwan Kilani (eds.). Accepted. Messe-t up! Studies on the Afroasiatic Verbal t-Morpheme (Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics). Leiden: Brill.
Kastner, Itamar. 2020. Voice at the interfaces: The syntax, semantics and morphology of the Hebrew verb. Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3865067.
Nespor, Marina & Irene Vogel. 1986. Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.