IAAW2025: International Argument Alternation Workshop
Date: 20-Jul-2025 - 21-Jul-2025
Location: Kobe University, Japan
Web Site: https://sites.google.com/view/iaaw2025
The International Argument Alternation Workshop (IAAW) will be held in person
at Kobe University in Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, on July 20 and July
21, 2025.
“Argument alternations” are phenomena in which a set of (or one of the)
arguments of the verb have alternative realizations (in terms of grammatical
relations, case marking, etc.) (e.g., Dowty 2000; Levin and Rappaport Hovav
2005). English has a wide range of argument alternations. Some representative
ones include causative/inchoative alternation (e.g., The boy broke the dish/
The dish broke), locative alternation (e.g., John loaded hay onto the truck/
John loaded the truck with hay), and dative alternation (e.g., Chris gave Kim
a book/Chris gave a book to Kim), among many others (Levin 1993).
Argument alternations have been studied by applying a diverse range of
theories, methods, and approaches: cognitive linguistics (e.g., Law 2022),
corpus linguistics (e.g., Gries and Stefanowitsch 2004), Construction Grammar
(e.g., Goldberg 1995), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (e.g., Davis,
Koenig and Wechsler 2021), Generative Grammar (e.g., Baker 1988), Lexical-
Functional Grammar (e.g., Bresnan and Kanerva 1989), Role and Reference
Grammar (e.g., Van Valin 2007), and typology (e.g., Malchukov 2015), to name a
few.
The workshop aims to serve as a platform encouraging cross-theoretical
discussions on argument alternations, bringing together researchers with
different backgrounds. We invite papers that discuss new data or new
generalizations of argument alternations—they can be argument alternation
patterns from understudied languages or microvariations of already well-
studied alternations (verb A alternates but verb B does not, yet both verbs
belong to the same category), or papers that highlight some fresh data on well
- or less-known argument alternations and discuss them in light of a newly
developed component of the theory or under a new perspective.
We welcome papers dealing with any types/aspects of argument alternations (e.g
., swarm alternation, passive, possessor raising, noun incorporation,
differential subject/object marking). We are particularly interested in
research on less-known types (e.g., Kishimoto 2024).
Possible research questions include (but are not limited to):
1. Are there any differences in the encoded lexical meanings between the
alternants?
2. How are the morphological codings motivated in argument alternations? Are
they unique to the alternations or found elsewhere?
3. Are alternations driven syntactically or semantically? What is the evidence
for the division?
4. Are there microvariations or speaker variations in alternation patterns?
How are they motivated?
5. What do diachronic data tell us about the changes involved in argument
alternations?
6. Can a metaphor improve the acceptability of an alternating pattern (cf.
Salkoff 1983)? If so, why?
7. Are multiple argument alternations possible with a single verb? What
factors trigger them?
8. What is the possible range of the (micro-)variations in argument
alternations? What is their motivation?
9. Are there any grammatical contexts in which one alternant is possible,
while the other is not? Why?
10. What semantic classes of predicates show the same alternation patterns?
11. Are there any grammatical operations that make argument alternations
possible?
Note: Kobe University will consecutively host two independent international
meetings. IAAW (July 20-21, 2025) will take place immediately after The 18th
International Conference on Role and Reference Grammar (RRG2025) (July 18-19,
2025).
Call for Papers:
Submissions are invited for 20-minute oral presentations (+10 min. Q&A.).
Please submit an anonymous one-page abstract, not exceeding 500 words,
including examples (references and tables/figures may be on the second page),
by December 31, 2024, in PDF format, via EasyAbs system on the Linguist List,
whose URL will become available in November 2024.
Please use a few representative words from the title as the filename (e.g.,
locative_clear_verbs_korean.pdf) to maintain the file’s anonymity.
Authors may submit one individual and/or one co-authored abstract.
Important dates:
‧ Abstract submission: November 1 - December 31, 2024
‧ Notification of acceptance: January 31, 2025
‧ Workshop dates: July 20 and 21, 2025