The workshop went ahead as planned on 23 May 2025 at the HUN-REN Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics in Budapest (Hungary). It figured two talks on phonetics and phonology, one by Nicole Dehé (Konstanz) [invited], discussing “(My) current issues in the study of the phonology of Icelandic,” and a joint talk by Ásgrímur Angantýsson (Reykjavík) and Finnur Friðriksson (Akureyri) entitled “The current status of regionally distributed phonological variation in Icelandic.” Exploring southern, northern, and North-American varieties, the work presented here was based on questionnaires as well as lab experiments and focused, among other things, on pre- and post-aspiration and monophthongization. Consequences for phonological theories were pointed out at various places.
An interface talk by Ingunn Hreinberg Indriðadóttir (Reykjavík) and Nicole Dehé (Konstanz) tackled “The syntax prosody relation in Icelandic: Focus on V3.” The authors presented experimental evidence for the prosodic marking (often via prominence shifts) of structures deviating from the canonical V2 patterns.
Sigríður Sæunn Sigurðardóttir (Reykjavík) addressed foundational aspects of methods in historical linguistics in “Predicting the propagation of language change using regular time series.” Major issues here were details of sampling and scaling applied to the phenomenon of “oblique-case substitution” with experiencer verbs as documented in the Icelandic Gigaword corpus.
The second part of the workshop was devoted to syntax, with an experimental talk by Xindan Xu (Reykjavík) on “The acceptability of subject-initial V3 in Icelandic adverbial clauses”, documenting a higher degree of acceptance of non-standard V3 for central as opposed to non-integrated adverbial clauses. Anna Bliß (Leipzig) presented a formal model of “[…] the syntax of verbal mood and l(ong)d(istance)r(reflexivization) in Icelandic” relying on a particular feature-calculus interacting with binding and scope. In ” Getting (im)personal: On-going syntactic change in Icelandic” Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir (Reykjavík) and Joan Maling (Brandeis) revisited the so-called “new passive,” arguing that a cluster of features, accusative case assignment among them, speak for an analysis as an active construction. Finally Thórhallur Eythórsson (Reykjavík) [invited] (online) looked at hitherto neglected “Adjectival predicates with oblique arguments in Icelandic: Synchronic status and diachronic shifts,” which provide further input to debates on patterns of object-to-subject reanalysis.
Thanks to dedicated presenters as well as active participation by local linguists, the workshop saw lively debates, uncovering desiderata for further research, as is standard in the field. Negotiations are under way about publishing individual papers in a special issue of a renowned peer reviewed journal.