(A)typical Clauses across Languages

Dear Colleagues,

In both scholarly papers and textbooks, linguists have presented the typical clause as consisting of an active, transitive verb and its overt arguments. For example, consider the following, constructed clause given in a section on structural analysis in a popular introductory linguistics textbook (Yule, 2006: 80; see also, e.g., Comrie, 1989, and Payne, 1997):

Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding

The conception of the clause in the dominant grammatical tradition, passed on in linguistic training and reflected in our terminology, is based on a rather limited set of data. Such a conception of the clause originated from the study of constructed ‘sentences’ and is heavily influenced by written language, primarily from the Indo-European family (for discussion, see Linell, 2005; Ono, Laury and Suzuki, 2021).

However, it has been shown that, in conversation, the most basic use type of human languages (Schegloff, 1996; Fillmore, 1974), transitive clauses such as the one above are actually not that common. Thompson and Hopper (2001) showed that, in English conversation, two-participant clauses account for only 27% of all clauses in the conversational data they studied, with one-participant clauses accounting for 73%. Similar results have been obtained from several other languages (for Finnish, see Helasvuo, 2001; for Javanese, see Ewing, 2005; for Japanese, see Ono, Sadler and Daiju, 2020; and for Russian, see Turk, 2000). Furthermore, in many languages, overt mentions of participants who are involved in the action or state expressed in the clause are rare (for Japanese, see, e.g., Ono and Thompson, 1997; for Indonesian, see Ewing, 2019). Thus, it appears that the clause types that are often thought to be the most common are actually atypical, even in the most commonly studied languages from the Indo-European language family.

In our Special Issue, we propose to examine the syntactic formats of common and uncommon clause types and their functions in everyday conversation in a wide range of geographically, typologically, and genetically unrelated languages. We will explore the analytical and theoretical relevance of the concept of the ‘clause’ for our understanding of human language in general. We ask questions such as (1) how the concept of the ‘clause’ should be defined and whether the celebrated status given to it is deserving, given its manifestation in actual data across languages (Ono et al., 2019); (2) how ‘verbless’ clause types should be understood (Haspelmath, 2022); and (3) whether the concept of the ‘predicate’ might be more useful in crosslinguistic study than the concept of the ‘clause’ (Thompson, 2019). We encourage the participation of scholars who are interested in the status of the clause in everyday conversation, regardless of theoretical orientations and language specialties.

Tentative Completion Schedule
Abstract Submission Deadline: 5 January 2024
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 1 February 2024
Full Manuscript Deadline: 1 September 2024

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Languages Editorial Office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring a proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review.

References

Comrie, Bernard 1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ewing, Michael 2005. Grammar and Inference in Conversation: Identifying Clause. Amsterdaqm: Benjamins.

Ewing, Michael 2019. The Predicate as a locus of grammar and interaction in colloquial Indonesian. Studies in Language 43 (2).

Fillmore, Charles J. 1974. Pragmatics and the description of discourse. In Siegfried J. Schmidt (ed), Pragmatics II, 83–104. Munich: Fink.

Haspelmath, Martin 2022. Nonverbal clause constructions. Ms. https://www.academia.edu/71539642/Nonverbal_clause_constructions.

Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa 2001. Syntax in the Making. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Laury, Ritva, Tsuyoshi Ono & Ryoko Suzuki 2019. Questioning the Clause as a Crosslinguistic Unit in Grammar and Interaction. Studies in Language 43 (2) 364-401.

Linell. Per 2005. The Written Language Bias in Linguistics. London: Routledge.

Ono, Tsuyoshi and Sandra A. Thompson 1997. Deconstructing “Zero Anaphora” in Japanese. BLS 23, 481-491.

Ono, Tsuyoshi, Misumi Sadler and Saori Daiju 2020. Nihongo no nichijookaiwa ni okeru 'kihonteki' tadooshisetsu ['Canonical' transitive clauses in Japanese everyday conversation]. Otani, N, & Nakayama, T (Eds.). Ninchi Gengokaku to Danwa Kinoo Genogaku no Setten [Interface between Cognitive Linguistics and Discourse Functional Linguistics], 165-182. Tokyo: Hituzi.

Payne, Thomas 1997. Describing Morphosyntax. A Guide for Field Linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1996. Turn organization: one direction for inquiry into grammar and interaction. In Elinor Ochs, Emanuel Schegloff, and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, Sandra A. 2019. Understanding ‘clause’ as an emergent ‘unit’ in everyday conversation. Studies in Language 43 (2) 254–280.

Thompson, Sandra and Paul Hopper 2001. Transitivity, clause structure, and argument structure: Evidence from Conversation. In Joan Bybee & Paul Hopper (eds.) Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. 27-60. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Turk, Monica 2000. Word Order in Russian Conversation: A Quantitative Study. MA Thesis, UC Santa Barbara.

Yule, George 2006. The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Prof. Dr. Ritva Laury
Prof. Dr. Tsuyoshi Ono
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• clause
• conversation
• (a)typicality
• overt mention
• predicate