Call for papers , SGG 55 Modalität und ihre Schnittstellen zur Aspektualität, Temporalität und Epistemizität

2025-07-29

Modality and its interfaces with aspectuality, temporality and epistemicity is the title of a conference that took place in June 2025 at the Sorbonne Université in Paris. This conference marked the twelfth meeting of the open international working group Modality in German and in Cross-Linguistic Comparison, which was founded in 1992 by Heinz Vater and Oddleif Leirbukt.

We invite not only the conference participants but also other interested authors to publish their contributions in Volume 55 of the journal Studia Germanica Gedanensia.

The volume is open to any submission dealing with one of the domains listed below, either from a contrastive perspective involving a Germanic variety, or from the point of view of Germanic linguistics per se. Contributions dealing with lesser-described or non-standard languages and varieties are especially welcome.

Selected topics

  • The taxonomy of modal meanings, the subdivision of root modality and the relationship between root and epistemic modality.
  • The merits and limits of quantificational views on modality (e.g. in possible worlds semantics) and the use of the concepts of possibility and necessity as semantic primaries for the depiction of modality, in contrast with traditions using the concept of modality as a cover term for all kinds of propositional attitudes.
  • Grammaticalization into and out of the domain of modality. This includes, for instance, post-modal meanings such as diachronically secondary uses as temporal or aspectual auxiliaries, or specialized illocutionary values (e.g. in concessive contexts), but also grammaticalization into the modal domain (e.g. GET verbs turning into permissive modals)
  • Secondary modal interpretations of non-modal expressions, especially in the aspectual-temporal domain.
  • Modality and negation, modality and polarity.
  • Epistemic modality and its scope : non-propositional epistemicity, the interaction between epistemics and sentence mood, epistemicity as illocutionary modification (or speech act specification), epistemicity as a circumstance.
  • Epistemic modality and speaker-orientation : logophoricity vs egophoricity, interactional views on epistemicity, epistemicity as deixis.

Formal phenomena (indicative list):

  • modal verbs
  • modal modifiers (adverbs or adjectives)
  • modal discourse markers
  • grammatical or semi-grammatical modal items (mood markers, particles)

Languages of publication are German and English. The manuscript should be approximately 40,000 characters in length (including footnotes and bibliography).

Please submit your contribution, which must not have been previously published elsewhere, by December 1, 2025 via Submissions | Studia Germanica Gedanensia.

In addition to articles, book reviews and reports on linguistic conferences may also be submitted.

We look forward to your contributions and are happy to answer your questions.

Olivier Duplâtre (Sorbonne Université)                                              olivier-duplatre@wanadoo.fr

Pierre-Yves Modicom (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3)                pierre-yves.modicom@univ-lyon3.fr

Anna Socka (Uniwersytet Gdański)                                                     anna.socka@ug.edu.pl