May 21, 2026 - May 22, 2026
Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description : Motion Event Expression in the Nominal Domain
In 2017, the first NAMED conference started from the observation that there has been a thirty-year period of extensive research exploring the typological distinction between Verb-framed and Satellite-framed languages. Whether the Path is expressed by the verb or a satellite gave rise to abundant literature from a variety of perspectives including those in descriptive linguistics and in psycholinguistics.
As Talmy (2017) noted there is a full range of parameters of Motion description which has been left somewhat unexplored:
“[…] research on the Motion typology has mainly addressed only Manner from the full set of framing relations, and only Motion from the full set of macro-event types. And research on fictive motion has addressed mainly coextension paths out of the full set of path categories. But researchers can use their strengths in diverse languages and empirical methods to examine the remaining parameter values”. (Talmy, 2017: 1).
The NAMED conference (Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description) is a forum for discussing these unexplored aspects of motion-event description.
It goes without saying that motion is not solely expressed through verbs and particles, but it is important to emphasize this point; languages employ a variety of strategies for encoding motion, utilizing morphological and lexicogrammatical resources in distinct ways. NAMED 2026 will serve as a forum to address a relatively unexplored means of motion event encoding: the nominal encoding of motion. This topic has been largely overlooked in the community of space and motion studies and raises broader questions about the differences between nouns and verbs, particularly the special status of deverbal nouns. These differences may be absent or unmarked in some languages, others may exhibit two parallel or competing strategies driven constraints that have yet to be fully explored.
By broadening the discussion to include nominal structures, we wish to uncover how nominal motion event expression relates to the verbal domain and how the typological distinctions observed in the verbal domain behave in the nominal domain. Are they maintained, transformed, reduced? The new exploration of motion in the nominal domain could help to refine our understanding of motion verb constructions across languages.
While we want to encourage submission on the nominal expression of motion event, we also welcome papers on all sort of devices used to encode motion event, not only verbs but also adverbal and adnominal markers with which they interact. We also acknowledge that the conference will be taking place on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Nation and we therefore especially welcome papers that report on motion events in one or more indigenous languages.
Possible topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
• In what contexts are nominal structures preferred over verbal structures for encoding motion events, and what pragmatic functions do these nominal structures serve?
• Do motion nouns inherit verbal properties (such as argument structure and aspectual features) in their semantic structure?
• How is motion expressed in languages with greater lexical flexibility compared to those with more rigid structures? Does a rich morphology compensate for reduced lexical flexibility?
• Can the typological distinctions between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages be observed in the nominal domain?
• How do representations of manner and path in the nominal domain compare to those in the verbal lexicon? For example, do we find aspectual shifts? What constraints or restrictions does the nominal domain impose?
• What role do nominal elements play in representing motion. Can infinitives and gerunds be considered as occupying intermediate stages of dynamicity between verbs and nouns?
• What do diachronic perspectives reveal about the pathways through which motion nouns develop?
• How do verbal and nominal means of encoding motion interact in and across languages?
• How do nominal structures interact with other elements of discourse to convey complex motion events?
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Denis Bouchard, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
Bert Cappelle, Université de Lille, France
Eric Corre, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3, France
Liesbet Heyvaert, KU Leuven, Belgium
Sally Rice, University of Alberta, Canada
Submission instructions:
We invite abstracts for NAMED 2026 for 30-minute oral presentations (20 minute talk + 10 minutes for questions) or for poster presentations.
Clearly indicate the research aim(s); methods and data and (anticipated) results.
State whether the abstract presents work for an oral presentation or a poster presentation.
Include 5 keywords.
Please submit your abstract in .doc and .pdf) via EasyAbs.
Abstracts should not exceed 500 words (excluding references).
Submissions open: June 18, 2025 - Dec. 1, 2025
Abstract review period: Dec. 1, 2025 - Jan. 12, 2026
Contact Email: [email protected]