This selection of papers originated as presentations at the first interdisciplinary workshop on Agency and Intentions in Language held at the Georg-August University of Goettingen in January 2021. The goal of this workshop was to bring together scholars in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology interested in questions related to agency and intentions, broadly construed. The workshop met with considerable interest from the research community and has led to a series of annual workshops.
In this selection of papers, we present some of the linguistic contributions from the workshop. On the linguistic side, the topics that were discussed at the workshop include the following: ways in which natural languages manifest different degrees of agency, the distinction between intentional and non-intentional actions (morphological marking, syntactic structures, semantic denotations of verbs and adverbials, pragmatic and contextual differences), connections between agency, intentions, and event structure and relations between agency, intentions, and causality.
The collection consists of four papers each of which focuses on a different phenomenon in a different language and also assumes a different methodology or framework. What all these contributions have in common and share with the spirit of the workshop is that they aspire to describe and then capture their respective phenomena making use of notions that are not part of the traditional conceptual palette.
The first paper ‘Agency in the English Way-Construction’s Constraints’ by Caterina Cacioli uses a corpus data analysis to provide a more accurate description of collocations involving way in English, such as dance one’s way through. The surprising finding reported in the paper is that way-constructions are possible with inanimate subjects contrary to what has been previously believed. This finding prompts the author to broaden the notion of agency.
The paper ‘On Some Epistemic Access Effects’ by Francesco Costantini focusses on what is traditionally called ‘subjunctive obviation’ phenomena using Italian data. Incorporating recent observations that subjunctive obviation is attested beyond subjunctive clauses, the author argues that the crucial role in the obviative/non-obviative split is played by the availability of the self-knowledge interpretation.
‘Two Semantic Paths to Unintentional Causation’ by Ömer Demirok investigates two constructions that are used to express unintentional actions in Laz (a South-Caucasian language). It is shown that these constructions have different empirical finger-prints and thus, should be analysed differently. The two analyses investigated by the author – modal and non-modal – are independently motivated for non-intentional constructions in other languages. The data from Laz indicate that both analyses are necessary.
In ‘Letting Structure Speak with Authority’ by Marta Donazzan, Clementine Raffy, Bridget Copley, and Klaus von Heusinger, two French causative constructions with laisser ‘let’ are examined. It is argued that the well-documented interpretative difference between these two constructions can be derived from their structural differences. But establishing this meaning-form connection requires looking at the primitives of causal relations, which the authors of the paper define using the force-dynamic framework.
Putting together this volume would have been impossible without the help of many people. We would like to express our profound gratitude to the reviewers who contributed their precious time and expertise to critically evaluate the papers in this collection. We would also like to sincerely thank Elisa Perotti for very efficient support during the production process and Klaus von Heusinger for proposing this publishing opportunity to us.
Julie Goncharov and Hedde Zeijlstra