Call for Papers **Bridging contexts in semantic change** Colloquium to be held at the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) 19.–20. September 2024 Financed with financial support of the European Research Council (ERC), 101123544 EXREAN The concept of bridging context is central to the study of semantic change. It is well known that the transition from meaning A to B always involves a phase of polysemy, in which both meanings coexist in one form. Bridging contexts, partly corresponding to what Diewald (2002) terms critical contexts, are contexts that allow for an interpretation in terms of either the original meaning or a new meaning (cf. Evans & Wilkins 2000, Heine 2002). Such contextual settings are regarded as “the places where extended meanings commonly have their genesis” (Evans & Wilkins 2000: 550). To give an example, the reinterpretation of Old English sīþþan ‘since’ with the original meaning of ‘from the time that, after’ as a causal connector is argued to have begun in contexts such as (1), which trigger an inference of causality from the notion of temporal sequence. While this example admits a temporal interpretation supported by the perfective feature of the participle gewundod ‘wounded’, it also allows for a causal reading favored by the presence of the adjective irre ‘angry’, provided wæs is interpreted as encoding state (he was angry) rather than an inceptive-resultative meaning (he had come to be angry) (Hopper & Traugott 2003: 82-84). (1) þa sīþþan he irre wæs & gewundod, he ofslog micel þæs folces. ‘then, after/since he was angry and wounded, he slaughtered much of that troop’ (c. 880. Orosius 4 1.156.11 as cited by Hopper & Traugott 2003: 83) As illustrated by this example, the emergence of a new meaning is bound to specific contextual configurations that facilitate reanalysis, understood here in a broad sense as changes in the interpretation of a given form (cf. Hopper & Traugott 2003: 39). Example (1) is representative of a phase in which the new emerging meaning is contextually implicated. Inference processes such as metonymic and metaphoric extension are assumed to play a fundamental role in bringing about semantic change (cf. Hopper & Traugott 2003: 84-92). However, it is extremely difficult to operationalize bridging contexts in longitudinal diachronic analysis (Petré & Van de Velde 2018). Indeed, reanalysis and actualization may be indistinguishable in diachrony (De Smet 2012), which begs the question of the empirical reality of bridging contexts. Another open question concerns the precise mechanism through which bridging contexts may lead to meaning change. It has been argued that for meaning change to take place, the evolving form needs to appear regularly in contexts enabling an inference-driven reinterpretation (cf. Evans & Wilkins 2000, Detges & Waltereit 2002, Rosemeyer & Grossman 2017, Larrivée & Kallel 2020). We may thus ask with which frequency a given form needs to appear in a specific contextual configuration to be taken as an indicator of meaning change. **Aim of the workshop and invited contributions** The aim of this workshop is to critically assess the role and empirical reality of bridging contexts in the development of new meanings. We are particularly interested in the following questions, and many more: • Do we need to assume bridging contexts to explain semantic change? Through which mechanism do bridging contexts facilitate reanalysis? • What is the role of synchronic variation? Are there better and worse bridging contexts? • Do we need to distinguish bridging contexts and switch contexts, as proposed in the literature? • Does exposure to bridging contexts have a cumulative effect on reanalysis? • With what frequency must a given form appear in bridging contexts for us to take it as an indicator of incipient meaning change? Specific topics addressed by the talks in the workshop are the role of bridging contexts as the locus for reanalysis, inferential mechanisms leading to semantic reinterpretation, challenges in determining what rate of use of a given item in specific contextual settings can be taken as an indicator of language change, and the study of synchronic variation as a starting point for inferring diachronic processes. **References** De Smet, Hendrik (2012). The course of actualization. Language 88(3): 601-633. Detges, Ulrich and Richard Waltereit (2002). Grammaticalization vs. reanalysis: a semantic-pragmatic account of functional change in grammar. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 21(2): 151-195. Diewald, G. (2002). A model for relevant types of contexts in grammaticalization. New reflections on grammaticalization, 103-120. Evans, N., & Wilkins, D. (2000). In the mind's ear: The semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian languages. Language, 546-592. Heine, B. (2002). On the role of context in grammaticalization. New reflections on grammaticalization, 49, 83-101. Hopper, P. J., & Traugott, E. C. (2003). Grammaticalization. Cambridge University Press. Larrivée, P., & Kallel, A. (2020). The empirical reality of bridging contexts. Journal of Historical Linguistics 10(3). 427-451. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Petré, Peter and Freek Van de Velde (2018). The real-time dynamics of the individual and the community in grammaticalization. Language 94(4): 867-901. Rosemeyer, Malte and Eitan Grossman (2017). The road to auxiliariness revisited: the grammaticalization of FINISH anteriors in Spanish. Diachronica 34(4): 516-558.