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Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication ACLC

Habituals

Habituals constitute a complicated grammatical category as it operates at the borderline of aspect and modality. One aspect of habituality that has not been explored in detail is the idea that it may be relevant at different layers of grammatical organization. The research group will explore this idea by comparing data from a range of different languages.

Key objectives

This research group will explore the idea that habitual expressions may:

  1. characterize types of events or states that involve repetition;
  2. characterize a specific, individual event or state as habitually recurring;
  3. characterize a set of different events of states (e.g. with varying participants) as habitual; and
  4. characterize a proposition as universally valid.

By including the latter use, the project includes genericity within its scope.

Impact

A large part of daily life consists of habitual actions. Further insight into the different layers of grammatical organization at which habituality may apply may thus also lead to a better understanding of habits in general, including their relation to universal truth statements.

Events

The group meets every two weeks, which are dedicated to presentation and discussion of typological data, hypotheses, and discussion of draft versions of ‘ a joint edited volume to be published by John Benjamins Publishing Company in the series Typological Studies in Language.

Coordinator and group members

Hongmei Fang
Egbert Fortuin (University of Leiden)
Rene Genis
Riccardo Giomi
Sune Gregersen (Kiel University)
Kees Hengeveld (coordinator)
Lois Kemp
Paula Kyselica
Ezra La Roi (Ghent University)
Hella Olbertz (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
Eugenie Stapert (Kiel University)
Jacques van der Vliet (University of Leiden)
Hein van der Voort (Museu Goeldi)
Sjaak de Wit (University of Leiden)
Arok Wolvengrey (First Nations University of Canada)
Ewa Zakrzewska