Tense, aspect and mood are fundamental grammatical categories of the verb and have long constituted a central domain of investigation in Romance linguistics. The field is at once classical and innovative: while there already exists a substantial body of research on TAM phenomena in the Romance languages, ongoing methodological and theoretical developments continually open up new perspectives for their study. Moreover, since natural languages are constantly undergoing change, familiar phenomena often invite renewed scrutiny.

For instance, tense forms such as the imperfect or the synthetic and analytic future are increasingly developing modal functions (see Dessì Schmid 2010; Rodríguez Rosique 2024). In many Romance languages, the analytic perfect is undergoing grammaticalization in the form of an aoristic drift (Squartini & Bertinetto 2000; referential drift in Müller 2023). Approaches grounded in cognitive linguistics and construction grammar offer promising theoretical frameworks for reinterpreting the use of the subjunctive (cf. Radatz 2024). From a methodological point of view, discourse-oriented approaches have gained prominence, focusing on how the semantics of tense, aspect, and mood evolve in context and across different discourse types (Müller 2023; Egetenmeyer, Dessì Schmid & Becker 2024). Finally, corpus linguistics and methods from artificial intelligence offer innovative tools for exploring TAM-related phenomena from new angles.

We invite abstracts addressing current developments and perspectives on TAM in the Romance languages. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Emerging trends in the study of TAM in Romance languages
• Expressions of aspectuality and modality across Romance varieties
• Modal readings that have developed from tense forms
• Theoretical and modelling approaches to TAM grounded in cognitive linguistics or construction grammar
• Empirical studies offering new insights into specific TAM phenomena
• Under-researched categories in Romance languages, such as mirativity or evidentiality
• Innovative methodological approaches and modern techniques
• Implications of linguistic findings for didactics

The list of topics above is intended as a guideline and may be supplemented by further proposals. All contributions addressing recent developments in the areas of tense, aspect, and mood in the Romance languages are welcome. Each presentation will have a total duration of approximately 40 minutes including time for discussion. The conference language is English.

Please send your abstracts by 31 December 2025 to the following address: tanja.prohl@uni-bamberg.de

Bibliography:

Dessì Schmid, S. (2010). Modal uses of the Italian imperfetto and the Spanish imperfecto: A comparison. In M. Becker & E. Remberger (Eds.), Modality and mood in Romance: Modal interpretation, mood selection, and mood alternation (pp. 39–66). Niemeyer/De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110234343.1.39
Egetenmeyer, J., Dessì Schmid, S., & Becker, M. (Eds.). (2024). Tense, aspect and discourse structure (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 492). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111453897
Müller, L. (2023). The Spanish and the Portuguese Present Perfect in discourse (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 279). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.279
Radatz, H.-I. (2024). The Romance subjunctive schema: Grammaticalisations and constructionalisations in a comparative CxG analyses of Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 23, 249–281. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.445
Rodríguez Rosique, S. (2024). What is a morphological future doing in a si-clause? Traces of mirativity in Spanish. Lingua, 304, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103710
Squartini, M., & Bertinetto, P. M. (2000). The simple and compound past in Romance languages. In Ö. Dahl (Ed.), Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe (pp. 403–440). De Gruyter.