Forthcoming: Locative and existential predication: On forms, functions and neighboring domains

Chris Lasse Däbritz (ed), Josefina Budzisch (ed), Rodolfo Basile (ed)

Synopsis

Locative and existential predications are fundamental linguistic constructions that exhibit significant formal overlap while serving distinct communicative functions. Locative clauses typically anchor a definite referent to a spatial context, whereas existential clauses introduce new, often indefinite, referents into discourse. Despite their central role in syntactic and typological research, the cross-linguistic diversity of these predications remains largely underexplored. This collective volume originates from workshops held in 2023 at the Annual SLE Meeting in Athens and the International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Heidelberg. It brings together in-depth analyses of locative and existential predications across a wide range of languages, drawing on diverse methodological and theoretical approaches. Rather than imposing a single framework, the volume deliberately allows for variation in how these constructions are defined and analyzed, reflecting the complexity and diversity of linguistic structures. A key theme of the book is the relationship between locative, existential, and possessive predication. Many of the included studies highlight the formal and functional connections between these domains, illustrating how different languages encode possession through structures that overlap with locative and existential constructions. The volume also challenges conventional assumptions about structural distinctions between these predications, showing that in many languages, such boundaries are blurred or even nonexistent. The introductory chapter reviews key findings from prior research and offers a refined typology of locative and existential predications. It also highlights the major insights from the remaining chapters, each of which provides a detailed empirical analysis of these constructions in one or several underdescribed languages. The contributions address (i) the structural and functional properties of locative and existential clauses, (ii) criteria for distinguishing these constructions in languages where formal differentiation is minimal, (iii) their frequency and usage in natural discourse, and (iv) grammaticalization pathways that link locative, existential, and possessive predication. By integrating data from a broad range of languages and perspectives, this volume advances our understanding of locative and existential predication and offers a foundation for future research in typology, syntax, and historical linguistics.

Chapters

  • Introduction
    Chris Lasse Däbritz, Josefina Budzisch, Rodolfo Basile
  • Construction-functions versus construction-strategies
    Martin Haspelmath
  • Locative/existential constructions in Southern Uto-Aztecan languages
    Lilián Guerrero
  • Locative phrases as arguments or adjuncts
    Existential and locative sentences in Greek
    Anna Kampanarou
  • Locative and existential predication contrasts in Gawarbati (Indo-Aryan) and the surrounding region
    Anastasia Panova, Henrik Liljegren
  • Predlocatives, existentials, and predpossessives in Nenets
    Josefina Budzisch
  • Language contact and the obsolescence of the Definiteness Effect
    New data from Spanish in contact with Catalan
    Jorge Agulló
  • ‘Be/have’ verbs in historical perspective
    Denis Creissels
  • Transitive have-verbs in possessive and existential clauses in Siberian Uralic languages
    Chris Lasse Däbritz
  • An information structure analysis of locative, existential, and possessive clauses in Wakhi
    Erin C. SanGregory
  • Distinguishing between existential and predicative possessive clauses in Turkic
    Birsel Karakoç
  • Spatial relations and valence extension
    Multifunctional spatial markers in Mocoví
    Cristian R. Juárez
  • Invenitive-locational constructions in the languages of Europe
    Rodolfo Basile
  • Posture verbs in locative and existential predication across three Australian languages
    Eleanor Yacopetti, Laurits Stapput Knudsen, Tom Ennever

Biographies

Chris Lasse Däbritz, German Science and Humanities Council

Chris Lasse Däbritz is a science policy advisor at the Head Office of the German Science and Humanities Council. Until 2024, he was affiliated to the Institute of Finno-Ugric/Uralic Studies of the University of Hamburg, first as a research fellow in the research project INEL (Grammars, Corpora and Language Technology for Indigenous Northern Eurasian Languages; 2016-2022) and after that as the PI of a DFG-funded research project on the typology and information structure of locative and existential predications in languages of the Ob-Yenisei area. In 2020, he obtained his PhD in General Linguistics, with his thesis devoted to information structural patterns in Northwestern Siberian languages. In 2022, he published a corpus-based descriptive grammar of Dolgan. His research interests include Siberian languages, linguistic typology, non-verbal predication, as well as information structure, and beyond linguistics, current developments of research funding and peer review processes.

Josefina Budzisch, University of Hamburg

Josefina Budzisch is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Finno-Ugric/Uralic Studies at the University of Hamburg. In 2021, she completed her PhD in Uralic Studies with a thesis on definiteness marking in Selkup. Since 2022, she has been affiliated with the INEL project (Grammars, Corpora, and Language Technology for Indigenous Northern Eurasian Languages), where she focuses on Nenets. In addition to her work on Nenets, she has a long-standing interest in Selkup, having previously worked on it in other projects. Her research interests include locative, existential, and possessive predications, their interaction with information structure, and corpus-based approaches to language description. In addition to her typological and descriptive work, she is engaged in language documentation.

Rodolfo Basile, Kyoto University, University of Tartu

Rodolfo Basile is a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at Kyoto University and a Research Fellow in Linguistics at the Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics of the University of Tartu. In 2024, he got his PhD in Finnic languages from the University of Tartu and the University of Turku, after defending a thesis titled "Invenitive-locational constructions in Finnish: a mixed methods approach". His research interests include quantitative and typological perspectives on (non-canonical) locational constructions, the interaction between voice and pragmatics in locational constructions, and comparing typologically different languages (such as Japanese, Tagalog, Estonian, and Latvian) to test existing typological claims by employing mixed methods.

book cover

Published

March 4, 2025
LaTeX source on GitHub

Series

Research on Comparative Grammar

Online ISSN

2749-781X

Print ISSN

2749-7801
Cite as
Däbritz, Chris Lasse, Budzisch, Josefina & Basile, Rodolfo (eds.). Forthcoming. Locative and existential predication: On forms, functions and neighboring domains. (Research on Comparative Grammar). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Copyright (c) 2025 Chris Lasse Däbritz, Josefina Budzisch, Rodolfo Basile; Martin Haspelmath, Lilián Guerrero, Anna Kampanarou, Anastasia Panovaa, Henrik Liljegren, Jorge Agulló, Denis Creissels, Erin C. SanGregory, Birsel Karakoç, Cristian R. Juárez, Eleanor Yacopetti, Laurits Stapput Knudsen, Tom Ennever

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