Conference Report: Challenging Construction Grammar: New Insights from Morphology (8–12 April 2024; Monte Verità, Switzerland)

Abstract

As reflected in its title, this workshop, which took place from the eighth to the twelfth of April 2024 at Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland, focused on constructional perspectives in their application to morphology (Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013). As Construction Grammar has become an important theoretical framework within linguistics, it has been applied in morphological studies from both synchronic (e.g., Booij 2010; Jackendoff & Audring 2020) and diachronic perspectives (Hartmann 2019; Van Goethem & Norde 2020). Nevertheless, Construction Morphology is a comparatively young branch of Construction Grammar that poses many open questions and challenges. The questions that were asked within this workshop relate to the connection between morphology and Construction Grammar as a framework, the handling of phenomena situated at the interface of morphology and syntax, and how phenomena that are specific for the scope of morphology can be captured from a constructional point of view. To address this issue, young and early career researchers were invited to present their current work. These contributions were complemented by the contributions of the invited plenary speakers Muriel Norde (Humboldt University of Berlin), Francesca Masini (University of Bologna), Livio Gaeta (University of Turin), Kristel Van Goethem (University of Louvain) and Steffen Höder (University of Kiel). The workshop was organised by Elena Smirnova (University of Neuchâtel), Martin Hilpert (University of Neuchâtel) and Jenny Audring (University of Leiden), and made possible with the generous support of SCF (Congressi Stefano Franscini, https://csf.ethz.ch), the SNF (Swiss National Science Foundation, Programm Scientific Exchanges, Grant Nr IZSEZ0_221843) and the FLSH (Faculty of Arts and Humanities) of the University of Neuchâtel.