Valency-changing operations in Oceanic and Papuan languages (Workshop)

Date: 09-Jul-2025 - 09-Jul-2025
Location: University of Oslo (hybrid format), Norway
Contact: Valentina Alfarano
Contact Email: [email protected]

This workshop aims to bring together scholars studying argument structure and valency-changing operations in Oceanic and Papuan languages of the Pacific region. Languages worldwide employ various strategies to modify their diathetical structures, either altering the argument structure of a predicate or leaving it unchanged (Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019).
Mechanisms that modify the argument structure involve the addition or removal of an argument (e.g. causativization), while those that preserve the argument structure typically involve the promotion, demotion, or rearrangement of arguments (e.g. passivization).
Our workshop focuses on all types of operations targeting both agents and patients, including causativization, applicativization, anticausativization, antipassivization, and passivization.
We invite any submissions that explore the descriptive, typological, or diachronic aspects of these operations in Oceanic and Papuan languages, with a particular emphasis on their features in lesser-known and under-documented languages.
Abstracts should not exceed one A4 page, excluding references, tables, and examples. Please send your submissions to [email protected] and [email protected].

Submission deadline: 5 March 2025
Notification of acceptance: 20 March 2025

The workshop will be held either online or in hybrid format, depending on participant preferences and expected attendance.