WAASAP 7 - Workshop on Aspect and Argument Structure of Adverbs/Adjectives and Prepositions/Participles

Workshop on Aspect and Argument Structure of Adverbs/Adjectives and Prepositions/Participles (WAASAP 7)

The Workshop on Aspect and Argument Structure of Adverbs/Adjectives and Prepositions/Participles WAASAP is an international Workshop series that takes place biannually focussing on the aspect and argument structure of adjectives and participles and adverbs and prepositions. 

Previous editions were held at the University of Greenwich (2012), The Artic University of Norway at Tromsoe (2014), The University of Lille 3 (2016), the University Pompeu Fabra (2018), the University of Greenwich (2022) and the University of Tarragona (2024). 

WAASAP 7 will be hosted by the research lab UMR 7023 - SFL (CNRS & Université Paris 8).

Keynote speakers   

- Ane Berro (Universidad de Deusto)   

- Norbert Corver (Utrecht U.)

- Peter Hallman (Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence)

Call for papers


WAASAP welcomes research on the aspectual and argument structure of nonverbal categories, with a focus on adjectives, participles, prepositions and adverbs. The topics that we are interested in include, but are not restricted to, the following:   

(i) What are the parallelisms and contrasts between the argument and aspectual structure of verbs and those of adjectives, adverbs and prepositions?    

(ii) What are the correlates of the aspectual primitives in verbs –dynamicity, eventivity, duration, telicity– in the non-verbal domain? How do path structure, scale structure and boundedness apply for the different categories?   

(iii) What is the syntax of prepositional arguments? How do prepositional complements of adjectives in constructions like faithful to the book compare to prepositional arguments of verbs? How do dative complements of adjectives compare to dative arguments of verbs? (Berro & Fernández 2019, Fernández, Zúñiga & Berro 2020).   

(iv) How does the argument structure of verbs and adjectives or adpositions combine in complex syntactic structures (eg., in secondary predication contexts involving adjectives, adpositions or adverbs)
   
(v) How does modification by adjectives differ from modification by prepositional modifiers (una taza grande “a big cup” vs. una taza de porcelana “a porcelain cup / lit: a cup of porcelain”, Nikolaeva & Spencer 2012)
   
(vi) What diachronic change is observed in the syntax and semantics of participial forms and in the inventories of participial forms (cf. restructuring of the inventory of participles from Latin to the Romance languages). What diachronic changes underlie the change of verbs to prepositions (e.g. serial verbs changing to prepositions)?     
(vii) What are the syntactic properties of different types of participles cross-linguistically (e.g. adjectival participles, Hallman 2017; experiential participles, Berro 2019)?
   
(viii) What syntactic properties distinguish adjectives and prepositions from stative verbs cross-linguistically? (e.g. predicate clefting in Haitian Creole, Déprez 2000, Zribi-Hertz & Glaude 2014)

Abstracts We invite submissions for 25 minute talks (+10min discussion) in English.  Abstracts should not be longer than two pages (Times New Roman 12 pt, single space, 2,4 cm margins, in pdf format).  Abstracts have to be anonymous.  Submissions are restricted to a maximum of one single-authored submission and one joint submission per author, or two joint submissions.     
The abstracts should be submitted at https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/WAASAP7/

Deadline for submissions: 17 February 2026   
Notification of authors: 30 March 2026    
WAASAP 7: 18-19 June 2026

Berro, Ane 2019. Basque adjectival participles: Stative, resultative or experiential. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1), 66. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.730   

Berro, Ane, Fernández, B. 2019. Applicatives without verbs. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 37, 1273–1317. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-09437-4
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11049-018-09437-4
   
Corver, Norbert 2022. Adverbial '-s' as last resort: n and a get their support. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 40, 1023–1073. available under
https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/431400/s11049-021-09…
   
Deprez, Viviane 2003. Haitian Creole Se: A Copula, a Pronoun, Both or Neither? On the Double Life of a Functional Head.  In Recent Development in Creole Studies, edited by Dany Adone, Berlin, Boston: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2003, pp. 135-174. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110948318.135.     
Fernández, Beatriz, Zúñiga, Fernando and Berro, Ane 2020. Datives with psych nouns and adjectives in Basque. Folia Linguistica, vol. 54, no. 3, 2020, pp. 647-696. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2020-2050   

Hallman, Peter 2017. Participles in Syrian Arabic. In Ouali, Hamid (ed.) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXIX, pp. 153-179, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam.
   
Nikolaeva, Irina, and Andrew Spencer, 2012. Possession and modification—a perspective from Canonical Typology. In Dunstan Brown, Marina Chumakina, and Greville G. Corbett (eds), Canonical Morphology and Syntax (Oxford, 2012; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Jan. 2013)   

Zribi-Hertz, Anne & Herby Glaude 2014. Verb cognates in Haitian creole. Linguistic Review, 2014, 31 (2), pp.241-294.

Local organising committee: Aïcha Ben Rhouma (UMR 7023), Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (UMR 7023)& Elena Soare (U. Paris 8 & UMR 7023)

We gratefully acknowledge the sponsors of the workshop (under construction)                 
- Research group Structures formelles du langage (UMR 7023 - SFL CNRS & U. Paris 8)             
- IRN Typology across modalities (CNRS)

https://linguistlist.org/issues/36/3534/