Organizers: Paola Cotticelli-Kurras – Eystein Dahl – Jelena Živojinović
Contact information for questions: paola.cotticelli@univr.it
Please send abstract to: lvlt2026@ateneo.univr.it
This workshop explores how infinite verb forms and complementation strategies interact with changes affecting the alignment system in Late Latin. The last decades have witnessed a surge of interest in these domains of Late Latin morphosyntax resulting in a research output that has significantly enhanced our understanding of the grammar of this stage of Latin. However, most of the pertinent works, some of which are given in the references, has limited their focus to a subset of the pertinent constructions and strategies involved, so that the picture of their internal dynamics remains incomplete. No previous attempt has been made to explore them in a systemic perspective and a central goal of the present workshop is to remedy this shortcoming. It aims to bring together scholars working on these and related issues in different sources and stages of Late Latin but also in diachronically oriented perspective including Early and Classical Latin as well as Early Romance. There is evidence that Late Latin reflects a stage where the inherited predominantly nominative-accusatively oriented alignment system is about to give way to a semantically oriented system which in turn gives way to a system with neutral alignment. However, a systematic, text-based examination of the different stages in this development remains a desideratum, which this workshop sets out to fulfil. An important set of problems concerns the role of infinite verb forms in this process. On one hand, infinites are used in absolute constructions and, on the other hand, they are used in various types of periphrasis. While periphrastic constructions in many cases arguably appear to play a central role in alignment change, it remains to be explored whether or to what extent absolute constructions may impact basic alignment. As regards complementation strategies, the general diachronic trend is that infinite complementation, most notably the accusativus cum infinitivo are substituted by finite complementation involving subordinating conjunctions. While it is likely that this development relates to the more general change in alignment typology, it remains to be established whether it represents a cause or an effect of this development. While the primary focus of this workshop lies on Late Latin and related varieties of Latin and Romance, we expect that it will result in findings that will be relevant well beyond these philological disciplines.
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