Causative Constructions: the Realization of the Causee (Hans Broekhuis & Claire Gronemeyer) (original) (raw)

The "second causative": A typological sketch

Causatives and transitivity, 1993

For V.P. Nedjalkov, the preeminent investigator of causatives, who caused me -volitionally and non-volitionally, directly and indirectly, "factitively" and "assistively" (for definitions, see Nedjalkov, Sil'nickij 1969) -to engross myself in the subject/rom the grateful causee.

Causatives and the Role of v: Agent, Causer, and Experiencer *

2000

Transitive-intransitive (or causative-noncausative) pairs are presented in (1). The transitive sentences (a, c, and e) are 'causativized' versions of their intransitive counterparts (b, d, and f). (2) presents examples of periphrastic causatives. The causative predicates, make and have, take a clausal complement and the subject causes (or is responsible for the occurrence of) the event expressed by the complement. Examples (3a) and (4a) involve psychological predicates (psych-predicates), surprise and worry, respectively. These psych-verbs are transitives but, unlike the predicates in (1), they themselves cannot function as intransitive predicates. 1 In terms of meanings, however, they are basically equivalent to the periphrastic causative counterparts (3b) and (4b) and their relation to the non-transitive counterparts (3c) and (4c) is somewhat similar to what is observed in the transitive-intransitive pairs of (1). Thus, as far as English examples are concerned, except that these phenomena commonly involve some kind of causation in meaning, it is not quite clear if they involve a common structural property that is characteristic of the causative construction. Japanese provides a different picture, however. In comparison to English, these three phenomena in Japanese exhibit one common morphological property: The causatives all involve a causativizing suffix. Transitive-intransitive (or causative-noncausative) pairs are given in (5) and (6). (5) a. Hanako-ga gurasu-o kowa-si-ta. (kowa-s-u)-Nom glass-Acc break-tr-past (break-tr-pres) 'Hanako broke the glass.' b. Gurasu-ga kowa-re-ta. (kowa-re-ru) glass-Nom break-intr-past (break-intr-pres) 'The glass broke.' (6) a. Kyoko-ga tukue-o ugok-asi-ta. (ugok-as-u)-Nom desk-Acc move-tr-past (move-tr-pres) 'Kyoko moved the desk.' b. Tukue-ga ugoi-ta. (ugok-u) desk-Nom move-past (move-pres) 'The desk moved.' The (a) examples are transitives and the (b)'s intransitives. As clearly seen, the pair involves the same root, kowa-in (5) and ugok-in (6), and the transitive or intransitive form obtains via the attachment of a(n in)transitivizing suffx to the root:-s-for transitive and-re-for intransitive in (5); and-as-for transitive and-φ-(a zero morpheme) for intransitive in (6). The pairing between intransitives (noncausative verbs) and transitives (causative verbs) is not regular and there are various patterns, some of which are shown in (7), and what suffix a particular verb root takes is not predictable.

Causation: From Metaphysics to Semantics and Back

Perspectives on Causation Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 2017 Workshop, Edited by Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal and Nora Boneh, 2020

This paper examines reciprocal connections between the discussions on causation in philosophy and in linguistics. Philosophers occasionally seek insights from the linguistic literature on certain expressions, and linguists often rely on philosophers' analyses of causation, and assume that the relevant linguistic expressions denote philosophical concepts related to causation. Through the study of various semantic aspects of causative constructions, mainly targeting the nature of the dependency encoded in various linguistic constructions and the nature of the relata, this paper explores interfaces between the discussions in the two disciplines, and at the same time points to significant differences in their objects of investigation, in their methods and in their goals. Finally, the paper attempts to observe whether the disciplinary line is maintained, i.e. whether or not it is the case that metaphysical questions are examined as linguistic ones and vice versa.

Causative constructions and restructuring: two evergreen topics

Isogloss, 2024

Isogloss 2024, 10(4)/1 Jan Casalicchio & Peter Herbeck 1970ies, has come back as an important topic of discussion, which is fed by contributions from different countries and from different angles. Furthermore, while in the past decades the studies focused on few Romance languages, nowadays these constructions are studied in lesser-known Romance languages as well, and there are new studies that offer a cross-linguistic perspective. This Special issue deals with two types of predicates, causative and restructuring verbs. Although they do not form a uniform class, they show several similarities with respect to transparency phenomena, and therefore they are often analysed together. The papers by

Alex Alsina On the Argument Structure of Causatives

2008

Morphologically derived causatives are composed of a causative morpheme and a base verb. It is generally accepted that the causative morpheme is a two-place predicate expressing a relation between a causer and a caused event. This has suggested to some researchers that morphological causatives have essentially the same syntactic representation at D-Structure as English periphrastic causatives involving verbs like make or cause, which are also semantically two-place predicates. This line of research is most clearly represented by theories that derive causatives through syntactic incorporation, particularly those of Baker (1988) and Li (1990). In this study I will show that in certain languages the causative morpheme is a threeplace predicate, involving a patient in addition to a causer and a caused event. This assumption will not only provide a simple account of the basic generalizations about causatives, but also explain a whole set of facts that are completely mysterious for the In...