CfP

Languages differ in the ways in which they mark future time reference, and in the extent to which speakers can choose between future tense forms and the so-called futurate present when referring to future events (see e.g. Dahl & Velupillai 2013). In addition, future constructions differ in their grammaticalization paths: While some derive from modal verbs (e.g. English will/shall), others recruit change-of-state verbs (e.g. German werden ‘become’) or forms of come and go (e.g. English BE going to; -ya ‘go’, Bambara nà ‘come’, among many others, see Heine & Kuteva 2002) as future auxiliaries. The goal of this workshop is to take a contrastive perspective on the evolution of future constructions by bringing together scholars working on different languages and language families. In particular, we want to address the following questions:

– Which cross-linguistic tendencies can be observed in the grammaticalization of future constructions?
– To what extent can we compare the grammaticalization paths of future constructions with different origins?
– How do different future constructions compete in different languages, and can these patterns of competition be compared cross-linguistically?
– Which cognitive implications (see e.g. Fleischman 1982) do findings on the diachronic development of future constructions entail?

We invite papers on these and related questions from all linguistic disciplines. All authors of accepted papers will be invited to contribute to a peer-reviewed edited volume on the topic, which we plan to submit to the newly-established book series “Advances in Historical Linguistics” at Language Science Press.

Please send your abstract to Lena Schnee and Stefan Hartmann until Friday, July 15, 2022. Notifications of acceptance/rejection will be sent in early August. There are no special formatting requirements for abstracts. The language of the conference is English.