Events

Upcoming events

  • Mon
    20
    Apr
    2026
    3:00 pmRoom 3.30 (Camelot), Blandijn

    The presentation explores the syntactic development of the ablative gerund in Late Latin. Adopting a functional-typological perspective, it investigates the construction’s degree of nominality and sententiality. The analysis is based on a corpus of 12 texts dating from the 3rd to the 6th century AD and focuses on two main issues: the relationship between prepositional and non-prepositional ablative gerunds in Late Latin, and the level of internal syntactic complexity of the non-prepositional ablative gerunds. The comparison between prepositional and non-prepositional ablative gerunds offers evidence for a low degree of nominality of the ablative gerund in Late Latin. At the same time, the analysis of internal syntactic complexity shows a high level of sententiality. Although the ongoing development is evident, the presence of prepositional ablative gerunds, still displaying a noun-like behavior, indicates that the syntactic development is still in progress and not yet concluded.

    Show content

 

Past events

Event Information:

  • Fri
    12
    Dec
    2025

    Bernat Bardagil (Ghent University) - Argument marking patterns as a proxy for social contact in the Guaporé-Mamoré region of Amazonia

    10:00 amBlandijn 2 3.30 (Camelot)

    To what extent can we use a high-resolution comparative linguistics approach to open a window into human history when we lack tangible historical information? The Guaporé-Mamoré region, overlapping significant territory in the Bolivian and Brazilian lowlands, is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions in the continent. In spite of that, we know extremely little about the history of a vast majority of the languages, and the indigenous nations who speak them, before the 20th century. In this talk I will discuss my ongoing research examining grammatical properties in order to triangulate historical information about the nations inhabiting of this area.

    Jointly organised with BantUGent. To join the meeting online via MS teams, please contact Nina van der Vlugt.

    Show content