Feb. 24, 2026 - Feb. 27, 2026
Templatic morphology is characterised by morphological exponents that are either expressed by an invariant prosodic shape or by affixes that require a templatic form of the base to which they attach. The clearest examples can be found in Afroasiatic languages, as well as in some languages of California, e.g., Palestinian Arabic suxn ‘hot’, b-yusxun ‘it becomes hot’, saxxan ‘he heated (sth.) up’, sxuːne ‘fever’, and Sierra Miwok hallik-ihhɨʔ ‘he used to hunt’, halik-mehnɨhakt̪eʔ ‘I was hunting on my way’, halki-paː ‘a good hunter’, haːlik-t̪eːnɨ ‘to hunt along the trail’ (Zimmermann 2015; see also Goldsmith 1990: 83–95). Templates are also visible in language games and hypocoristics, in the sense that syllabic templates determine the truncated form, e.g., German Sebastian → Basti ~ Sebi.
It is still a matter of debate what mechanisms drive templatic morphology. Some researchers take templates to be the result of realisation rules, by which the morphology directly manipulates phonological material. Others, such as Bye & Svenonius (2012) and Bermúdez-Otero (2012), have insisted on a strict interpretation of modularity, where only the phonology is allowed to manipulate phonological material. On the latter approach, all morphology is assumed to be concatenative, and templatic phenomena must be derived phonologically from concatenative input strings. Moreover, the cognitive reality of these formalisations remains an open question. We welcome formal, experimental, and historical approaches to templatic phenomena in Semitic languages and beyond. The kinds of questions that we ask include at least the following:
- What is the status of templatic morphemes and consonantal roots in the grammar? Are they concrete phonological structures that are combined in derivations? Or are they merely abstractions over sets of items in the lexicon?
- What can root-and-pattern morphology tell us about the interface between morphology and phonology? Does morphology directly manipulate phonological material?
- Is templatic morphology categorically different from concatenative morphology? Or do templatic phenomena arise in a phonological module from concatenative inputs?
- What psycholinguistic evidence is there for (or against) the reality of templates and consonantal roots? How is templatic morphology processed in the brain?
- How might templatic morphology have evolved diachronically? How does it change and decay? Can it spread via language contact, and if so, under what conditions?
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The workshop is part of the DGfS meeting (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft), held in Trier.
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Invited speakers: Sabrina Bendjaballah (CNRS & Nantes Université), Adamantios Gafos (Universität Potsdam; to be confirmed)
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References
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Submission instructions:
We invite submissions for 20-minute oral presentations (+ 10 minutes discussion) in English. Abstracts should be submitted anonymously.
Abstracts should be at most one page long, plus references on the second page, on A4 paper with 2.5cm margins on all sides, and must be set in Times New Roman font (or similar) of at least 11 points. The deadline for submission is 15th of August 2025; notification date is 1st of September 2024.
Submissions open: June 23, 2025 - Aug. 15, 2025
Abstract review period: Aug. 16, 2025 - Sept. 1, 2025
Contact Email: [email protected]