Thematic issue: Finiteness in indigenous languages of South America
Editors
Bernat Bardagil (bernat.bardagil@ugent.be), Kim Groothuis (kim.groothuis@ugent.be), Karin Vivanco (vivanco@unicamp.br)
The notion of finiteness is notoriously difficult to define cross-linguistically (cf. Joseph 1983; Ledgeway 2007; Nikolaeva 2007, o.a.). Despite studies such as those by Givón (1990) or Cristofaro (2003), research on the issue of finiteness has too often focused on Indo-European languages, even though indigenous languages such as those spoken in South America often challenge these more traditional approaches. They can therefore prove crucial for informing our theories of grammar and expanding the empirical coverage of existing approaches. This special issue of Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos seeks to contribute to fill this gap by bringing together contributions on finiteness from the perspective of indigenous languages spoken in South America.
Finiteness has been connected to notions such as deictic anchoring (Bianchi 2003, Ritter & Wiltschko 2014, Groothuis 2022), assertion (Klein 1998, 2006), nominalization (Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993, Salanova 2007), mood (Vincent 1998), subordination or clause type. Furthermore, finiteness can be investigated in relation to its availability in matrix clauses.
In the specific case of indigenous languages of Amazonia, and South America more generally, nominalization is frequently exploited as a subordinating strategy (Dixon and Aikhenvald 1999, Gijn, Haude and Muysken 2011). The nature of the connection between nominalization and finiteness is itself still a largely unresolved issue, on which the indigenous languages of South America can shed light.
For the thematic dossier, we welcome papers that seek to contribute to descriptive, typological, or theoretical aspects of finiteness in one or more indigenous South American languages. Contributions from all theoretical frameworks are welcome, and the following topics are especially encouraged:
- The universality of finiteness and the categories involved in it
- Finiteness and argument marking
- Complementation/subordination and finiteness
- Nominalization and finiteness
- Embedded contexts and finiteness
- The diachrony of non-finite constructions
- Typological considerations of finiteness
- The connection of finiteness with clause-chaining
- Finiteness and clause size/functional structure
- Finiteness and modality, negation, and reality status
Languages
English (preferred), Portuguese and Spanish.
Instructions for the submission of proposals
The received manuscripts will undergo assessment under double-blind peer review and adhere to the editorial standards of Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos.
We encourage authors to submit their manuscript proposals beforehand. The proposals should include the following information:
- Name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s)
- Title of the article
- An abstract of no more than 100-200 words of the topic to be covered, addressing delineates the theoretical framework and research significance for the topic of finiteness.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 February, 2024
The submitted papers will have to follow the journal’s guidelines:
- The file must be 25 pages long, excluding the references. It can only contain an attachment of a maximum of 1 page.
- The text must be typed in Word, line space 2, Times New Roman 12.
- In phonetic transcriptions, the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) should be used, preferably the following fonts: ARIAL UNICODE MS, LUCIDA SANS UNICODE, DOULOS SIL UNICODE, CHARIS SIL UNICODE, GENTIUM UNICODE.
- Pages must be numbered.
- Papers have to be submitted in two versions: Word and PDF. Unfortunately, LaTeX submissions cannot yet be processed by our editorial system.
Submissions will be processed through the journal’s website: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/cel/user/register
Deadline for first submission: 30 April, 2024
About the journal
Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos is a Brazilian journal that has been publishing papers since 1978. All submissions are free of charge, and the published papers are open access. The journal adopts a continuous publication system (rolling pass).
References
Bianchi, Valentina. 2003. On finiteness as logophoric anchoring. In Jacqueline Guéron & Liliane Tasmowsky (eds.), Temps et point de vue/Tense and point of view, 213–246. Paris: Nanterre.
Cristofaro, Sonia. 2003. Subordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dixon, Robert, and Alexandra Aikhenvald. 1999. The Amazonian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gijn, Rik van, Katharina Haude, and Pieter Muysken. 2011. Subordination in Native South-American Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Groothuis, Kim A. 2022. On the Relation between Finiteness and Clause Size: Evidence from Romanian and Southern Italo‐Romance Irrealis Clauses. Transactions of the Philological Society 120(1). 32–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12226.
Joseph, Brian D. 1983. The synchrony and diachrony of the Balkan infinitive: A study in areal, general, and historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Klein, Wolfgang. 1998. Assertion and finiteness. In Norbert Dittmar & Zvi Penner (eds.), Issues in the theory of language acquisition: Essays in honor of Jürgen Weissenborn, 225–245. Bern: Peter Lang.
Klein, Wolfgang. 2006. On finiteness. In Veerle van Veenhoven (ed.), Semantics in acquisition (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics), 245–272. Springer.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1993. Nominalizations. London: Routledge.
Ledgeway, Adam N. 2007. Diachrony and finiteness: subordination in the dialects of Southern Italy. In Irina A. Nikolaeva (ed.), Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations, 335–365. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nikolaeva, Irina A. 2007. Introduction. In Irina A. Nikolaeva (ed.), Finiteness. Theoretical and empirical foundations, 1–19. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ritter, Elizabeth & Martina Wiltschko. 2014. The composition of INFL. An exploration of tense, tenseless languages and tenseless constructions. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32. 1331–1386.
Vincent, Nigel. 1998. On the grammar of inflected non-finite forms (with special reference to Old Neapolitan). Copenhagen studies in language 22. 135–158.