Research seminar: Guglielmo Inglese, Università di Torino
Title: Where do labile verbs come from? A cross-linguistic perspective.
Seminar
Date: Thursday 4 December 2025
Time: 15.00 – 17.00
Location: C307, Södra huset
Abstract
Patient-oriented lability – the use of identical verb forms in causal and noncausal contexts – is a widespread strategy for encoding the causal–noncausal alternation cross-linguistically.
Although widely attested, the factors shaping its distribution remain only poorly understood. Existing synchronic accounts link lability either to particular verb classes or to efficiency principles in connection with the notion of spontaneity, but little is known about how P-lability actually comes about and develops over time.
This talk offers a first comparative survey of its emergence, drawing primarily on Indo-European languages, supplemented with evidence from other families.
Where historical documentation or reconstruction is available, P-lability arises through several recurrent pathways. Loss of morphological distinctions – often triggered by sound change – may collapse previously distinct transitive and intransitive forms. Additionally, known mechanisms of syntactic change may create labile verb: argument-structure reinterpretation, extension of transitive or intransitive constructions to new verb (classes), and the development of usages via backformation.
Language contact can further encourage the spread of labile patterns across languages. These findings show that P-lability is historically heterogeneous and often independent of verb semantics or spontaneity, prompting a source-oriented reassessment of theories explaining its cross-linguistic distribution.
The seminar is held in English
Last updated: 2025-12-04
Source: Department of Linguistics