Causatives and Anticausatives

A comprehensive study of the passive voice suffix –kaa in Central Quechua is still missing in the Quechuanist literature. This work will provide a cognitive-functional analysis of this suffix using Ancash Quechua data (Huaraz-Huaylas dialect) based on its use with transitive and intransitive verbs. Next, it will focus on the so-called lexicalized uses of –ka, in which this suffix is considered to be part of the stem and not contributing really to a derived passive meaning. It is proposed that those cases are similar to those of transitive and intransitive passivized verbs, and they are better accounted for by the abstract passive schema defined as: (i) an affected/experiencing participant is in the subject position, and (ii) volitionality has been suppressed as much as possible for the initiation of the situation depicted by the event. Evidence for this analysis comes from the interaction between the causative suffix –tsi and some cases of lexicalization of –ka. The passive suffix can be used to create an intransitive lexical-middle verb (a naturally occurring middle situation). Those verbs can be found as intransitive verbs taking active meaning when using –tsi —e.g. wanuy, “to die”, becomes wanutsiy “to kill”. Finally, this work argues against the notion that –ka is not really a passive but some kind of middle. AQ has a passive suffix defined by contrast to the middle voice in a continuum of volitionality present in subject affectedness, the extremes being passive –ka (reducing volitionality) and middle –ku (enhancing volitionality).

The Causative/Inchoative alternation involves pairs of verbs, one of which is causative and the other non-causative syntactically and semantically (e.g., John broke the window vs. The window broke). In its causative use, an alternating verb is used transitively and understood as externally
caused. When used non-causatively, the verb is intransitive and interpreted as spontaneous. The alternation typically exhibits an affected argument (i.e., a Theme) in both intransitive and transitive uses, whereas the transitive use also involves a Causer that brings about the event.
Although they are often volitional agents (e.g., John broke the window with a stone), external causers may also be non-volitional causers (e.g., The earthquake broke the windows) and instruments (e.g., The hammer broke the window). Morphologically, languages exhibit different patterns reflecting the alternation, even intralinguistically. In languages like English, alternations are not morphologically coded, but they are in most languages. Languages like Hindi commonly mark causative (or transitive) alternations by means of different mechanisms, such as internal vowel changes or causative morphology. In many European languages, a subset of alternating verbs may exhibit an uncoded alternation, but most alternating verbs mark anticausativization with a reflexive-like clitic. In Yaqui (Uto-Aztecan), different patterns are associated with different verbal roots. The alternation may be uncoded, equipollent (i.e., both alternating forms are coded), and anticausative. Theoretically, different approaches have explored the alternation. Both lexical and syntactic causativization and anticausativization accounts have been proposed to explain the alternation. A third approach postulates that both forms are derived from a common source.

Este trabajo investiga la alternancia causativa y su compatibilidad con diversos tipos de argumentos dativos. Se desarrolla un análisis constructivista de la alternancia según el cual tanto la construcción transitiva causativa (Pablo rompió la radio) como la intransitiva incoativa (Se rompió la radio) son construcciones igualmente complejas, bi-eventivas, que comparten el estado resultante (la radio rota) y se diferencian por el tipo de evento superior. Se propone que existen dos tipos de predicados transitivos (causativos y simples -no causativos) y dos tipos de predicados inacusativos (incoativos y simples) que participan en construcciones sintácticas distintas y, por derivación, diferenciadas semánticamente. La propuesta ilumina el análisis de los argumentos dativos y permite dar cuenta de contrastes sistemáticos en las propiedades sintácticas y semánticas de argumentos dativos con verbos transitivos e inacusativos simples, por un lado, y causativos e incoativos, por el otro. Se muestra cómo la interacción entre los dos análisis ilumina la relación entre sintaxis y semántica.

During the last 40 years research of causativity belonged to the central themes of the general and comparative or better typological linguistics. In this respect it is astonishing that in my opinion from the Slavic side this subject was treated if at all very marginally in the past. My interest was motivated by the fact that CC requires an analysis, which touches an interface of morphology, semantics, lexicon and syntax. Therefore it is also easy to grasp by the Minimalistic Program (with the inclusion of Distributive Morphology). Furthermore, the theme comprises important observations concerning questions of diathesis and passive which moti- vated me to choose it for the present volume.

In this article the features of externally and internally caused verbs will be described and put into context of the phenomenon of unaccusa- tivity. My approach will be the following: I will try to characterize the relationship between lexicon and syntax, namely including the concepts of Distributive Morphology and of ROOT-Semantics of verbs, which participate or rather, do not participate in Causative Alternation and unaccusativity.
The Causative Alternation (CAL) will serve as criteria to distin- guish between externally and internally caused causation; with help of the CAL the unaccusative Verbs will be divided into two sub- groups: alternating unaccusative (AU-) verbs and non-alternating unaccusative (NAU-) verbs. In the following an alternate distinction between AU- and NAU-verbs will be developed, namely the pre- sence/absence of information about how the process to be treated was caused.

The universal concept of the encyclopedic lexicon in the English, German and Czech language seems to assume four different ROOTS of verbs at base to classify the Anti-Causativity-Opposition: √agen- tive (murder, assasinate, cut), √internally caused (blossom, wilt, grow), √externally caused (destroy, kill, slay) and √cause unspecified (break, open, melt).

Moreover, it will be shown that unergative/causative pairs depict an independent phenomenon which does not affect considerations about CAL (correspondent to Alexiadou et al. 2006a, b and Marantz 1997, but dissenting Levin − Rappaport Hovav 1995 and Reinhart 2000). In 6 and 7 I will provide an exact analysis of the roots (ROOTS) and the syntactic projections which derive from them.

Causatives and Anti-Causatives, Unaccusatives and Unergatives: Or How Big is the Contribution of the Lexicon to Syntax

In this paper the features of externally and internally caused verbs have been described, and connected with the phenomenon of Unaccusativity. It was my approach to elaborate the relation between lexicon and syntax, including the concept of distributive morphol- ogy and the ROOT-semantics of verbs that do, resp. do not partake in causative alternation and Unaccusativity.
The Causative Alternation served as criteria to distinguish between externally and internally (caused) causation; with its help the Unaccusativity verbs have been divided into two subclasses: alternating Unaccusativity (AU-) verbs and non-alternating Un- accusativity (NAU-) verbs. An alternative distinction between AU- and NAU-verbs has been found, namely the presence/absence of information about how the considered process was caused. Thereby the universal concept of encyclopedic lexica in the lan- guages English, German and Czech seems to assume at least four different ROOTS of verb as basis for classification of the anti-causativity-opposition: √agentive (murder, assassinate, cut), √internally caused (blossom, wilt, grow), √externally caused (destroy, kill, slay) and √cause unspecified (break, open, melt).
Furthermore, it has been shown that unergative/causative pairs depict an independ- ent phenomenon and do not effect the considerations about CAL (in accordance with Alexiadou et al. 2006a, b and Marantz 1997; but not in accordance with Levin − Rap- paport Hovav 1995 and Reinhart 2000).

"This dissertation is about the elements that build verbs, the elements that introduce arguments, and how these elements interact to determine the interpretation of arguments and events. A theory of argument structure is a theory how arguments are introduced syntactically, interpreted semantically, and marked morphologically, and how this information is linked to predicates and their morphological shape. Through a detailed empirical study of Icelandic verbal alternations, this dissertation contributes to a line of research in which much of the work of argument structure is handled by the syntax, the component of language responsible for combining elements into larger structures, rather than a pre-syntactic lexicon.

The major theoretical contribution of this thesis is a syntactic theory of argument structure which is much more syntactically autonomous than its closest relatives. The system proposed shares with construction-based approaches to argument structure the assumption that structures generate meanings independent of the lexical roots embedded in them. That is, lexical roots play a secondary role in effecting argument structures. However, it differs from most syntactic approaches in that the syntax is far less deterministic of semantics, much as late insertion theories of morphology take syntax to underdetermine morphophonology.

In the present theory, syntactic structure may underdetermine interpretation in three ways. First, a functional head may be compatible with multiple ‘allosemes’, or denotations, which are decided post-syntactically on the basis of surrounding material. The categorial v head, for example, may have the interpretation of an activity or a cause (among other possible interpretations), depending on the interpretation of its complement. Second, a DP may be interpreted as an entity, or may be type-shifted to be interpreted as a (stative) eventuality. Third, a lexical root is associated with a web of possible semantic contributions, but the selection from among them is made on the basis of surrounding structure, after such structure has been built."

El presente estudio aborda el uso de verbos transitivos en activa intransitiva con un significado próximo a los de la voz media, construcción a la que se ha prestado poca atención en la gramática griega. Los datos han sido tomados de los nueve libros de Historias de Heródoto.

Аннотация: в работе рассматривается проблема русско-скандинавского двуязычия в древней Руси X-XII вв. и обсуждаются два возможных случая синтаксического заимствования, связанных с особенностями употребления нескольких типов безличных конструкций.
Ключевые слова: диглоссия, билингвизм, языковые контакты, древнерусский язык, древнескандинавский язык, фонетика, грамматика, безличные предложения, каузативы
This paper is aimed at analyzing the Old Russian – Old Scandinavian bilingualism in Old Russia of the X-XII centuries. I discuss two possible cases of syntactic borrowing from Old Scandinavian involving non-trivial uses of impersonal constructions.
Key-words: diglossia, bilingualism, languages in contact, Old Russian, Old Scandinavian, phonetics, grammar, impersonals, causatives

The article describes the properties of deverbal nouns (maṣdars) in Standard Arabic. Prior accounts identify the following type (qaṣfu l-ʿaduwwi li-l-madīnati), among others, but neglect the maṣdar that introduces its internal argument as a direct complement in the genitive case and its external argument as a prepositional adjunct (taḥrīru l-madīnati ʿalā yadi l-ǧayši ). We argue that these two types reflect two different conceptu-alizations of ‘events’: bound-events, which describe a change that has taken place in the nature of a sub-stance represented by the internal argument; and unbound-events, which describe a change in the relation-ship between the internal and external arguments.
Within the lexical decomposition model, we propose a semantic basis for explaining constraints on direct transitive verbs according to (i) the type of maṣdars they form; (ii) the possibility of deriving a resul-tative passive participle (ism al-mafʿūl); and (iii) the alternation, for some verbs, between a causative and non-causative use without any morphological variation.

This paper offers a novel analysis of the Spanish light verbs poner(se) 'to become' and quedar(se) 'to become/stay' in combination with adjectives. These verbs have the peculiarity that they may appear with or without se in these constructions, with clear effects on argument structure and thematic and aspectual interpretation. I propose a unified formal analysis that takes event complexity and argument coindexing as the common denominator of se in these complex predicates. I further observe that these effects with se are not exclusive to these light verbs, but can also be observed in certain types of lexical verbs, strongly suggesting that both lexical and light verbs lexicalize the same eventive spine.

There are productive (-re/-e/-te, -yar/-ar) and non-productive (-V, -ke, -ka) causatives in Ainu. Non-productive causatives have traditionally been regarded as ‘transitives’, but proposing a revision of Tamura’s model of verbal structure in Ainu, this paper argues that they can be regarded as direct causatives, though causatives in -V do not have the same derivational status and should rather be regarded as lexical causatives. A cross-dialectal comparison shows that the causative function of -ka is gradually being replaced by the productive causative -re/-e/-te which came to be used as a default causative marker of direct/indirect causation. Three of five causative morphemes originated in the verbs ‘make’ and ‘do’; all of them have also been attested with the denominal causative function, which suggests the following general pattern for the development of causatives in Ainu: DO/MAKE > DENOM > DIR CAUS > (INDIR CAUS).

Anticausativization is a morphological process where a certain morphological marking incurs the suppression of the causing event and of the external argument. Koontz-Garboden (2009) advocated an analysis where the semantic operation responsible for anticausativization is reflexivization,i.e.,co-indexing of external and internal arguments. He argues that this analysis is applicable to anticausativization“in general,”i.e.,not only to anticausativization with reflexive morphemes but also to anticausativizaiton employing other types of morpheme as a marker of anticausativization. This paper examines the viability of this universal characterization,using the data from the Hokkaido dialect of Japanese.

In the article, Russian modal constructions with passive-like meaning with a modal component are considered (such as "Mne ne rabotaetsja" 'I cannot work' and "U menja diplom ne pishetsja" 'I cannot write a diploma'). I claim that the marking of the agent of the base verb depends both on the transitivity on the base verb and the semantics of constructions. Further I introduce a notion of "widening contexts" - special contexts, in which the constructions acquire new properties, which are absent in usual contexts.

This collection presents typological work on tense, aspect, and epistemic modality in a variety of languages and against the background of different schools of thinking, among which the St. Petersburg Typological School developed and so masterfully implemented by the Petersburg linguist, Vladimir Petrovich Nedjalkov. The volume honors this reputed scholar for his life work. It is in mainly this spirit that the following scholars have contributed to the volume: T. Tsunoda on Warrungu (Australian indigeneous language), L. Kulikov on Vedic, K. Kiryu on Japanese, Korean and Newari, N. Sumbatova on Svan (from the Kartvelian group), T.Bulygina & A. Shmelev, V. Plungian, Y. Poupynin, E. Rakhilina and G. Silnitsky on Russian, W. Boeder on Georgian, R. Thieroff on aorist and imperfect in European languages, on Russian, L. Johanson on Kipchak Turkic, I. Dolinina on Russian, N. Kozintseva on Old and Modern Eastern Armenian, Ch. Lee on Korean, W. Abraham on split ergative languages and German on Russian, on Russian, and K. Ebert on Kalmyk.

Full text / texte complet : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02541967v2

This paper deals with the identification of labile verbs in Andi (Nakh-Daghestanian, Russia), and more specifically its methods, results and conclusions for the definition of transitivity in Andi. Lability is traditionally defined as an unmarked valency-changing phenomenon characterizing verbs that can be used both transitively and intransitively without any formal change. Andi happens to feature a combination of three typological characteristics that challenges not only the identification of its labile verbs, but also the application of traditional definitions of lability and transitivity to its context. These characteristics are a radical P-alignment, the absence of any agent demoting or removing morphology, and the possibility for interpreting any unexpressed agent as arbitrary. They are crucial for the analysis of labile phenomena in Andi, because they were shown by D. Creissels to be responsible for a formal ambiguity between 'less labile' passive lability (when a labile verb used intransitively has a passive meaning) and 'more labile' anticausative lability (when a labile verb used intransitively has an anticausative meaning). Several syntactic tests were designed by different authors to distinguish cases of anticausative lability from those of passive lability. These tests involve the semantic interpretation of a reflexive-emphatic pronoun, compatibility with the intransitive imperative in combination with an imperative addressee referring to the nominative argument, and the possibility of the verb being used in an involuntary agent construction. Applied to Andi, these tests show that both anticausative and passive lability concern all transitive verbs, which suggests that they do not differ with respect to their syntactic status and that both involve a change in syntactic transitivity. This conclusion supports D. Creissels's suggestion that in languages sharing with Andi the relevant typological features, transitivity applies not to the predicative constructions themselves, but to their realizations.

Final published version available here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-57004-0_12
This chapter addresses the co-existence of two morphological mechanisms to express the causative-unaccusative alternation in Spanish, se and Ø. It has been observed that the choice between these patterns seems to be related to aspect in Romance. However, a detailed study of Spanish data will allow us to refine such hypothesis by claiming that aspect itself is determined by scale structure. Se and Ø will be analyzed as two lexical items competing to spell out the same head, v[BECOME], related to unaccusativity and located above AspP. Therefore scale structure and, eventually, aspect will be the relevant grammatical factors determining the competition to spell out v[BECOME] in Spanish.

Las teorías sobre la conceptualización de los eventos de cambio de estado (cf. Haspelmath 1993) han tenido una enorme presencia en los estudios sobre la alternancia causativo-inacusativa a partir del trabajo de Levin y Rappaport Hovav (1995), tanto en relación con el problema de la marcación de la alternancia como con el problema de qué verbos participan de ella. Este artículo reflexiona sobre su utilidad teórica y defiende la necesidad de redefinirlas mediante la aplicación del Principio de la Correspondencia Forma-Frecuencia (Haspelmath et al. 2014; Heidinger 2015), gracias al cual se evitan planteamientos circulares. Nuestro objeto de estudio serán los escasos verbos que participan de la alternancia lábil en español, cuya resistencia a la expansión de se como marca regular de la alternancia es una cuestión idiosincrásica que obedece tanto a la interacción de factores cognitivos, como la conceptualización de los eventos, como a factores gramaticales, como el aspecto y la estructura escalar.
PALABRAS CLAVE: conceptualización de
los eventos; alternancia anticausativa; alternancia
lábil.

This paper addresses Prins' (2016) recent proposal of a m(ə)-non-volitional prefix in the Kyomkyo dialect of Situ, showing that alternative analyses are preferable. In addition, it offers an account of some irregular anticausative forms in Situ, and presents evidence for a possible volitional mə-prefix in Gyalrong languages.

Lo studio esamina le diverse interpretazioni del costrutto formato da ‚rimanere’ seguito da participio passato, proponendo una distinzione tra valore stativo e valore eventivo con lettura anticausativa oppure passiva. L’interpretazione si fonda sull’analisi delle peculiarità sintattiche e semantiche delle principali componenti del costrutto (‚rimanere’, verbo al participio, argomento esterno) emerse dall’interrogazione di ampi ‚corpora’ digitali di italiano, in prospettiva anche diacronica e in comparazione con altre lingue.

This work revolves around a very peculiar set of Spanish verbs (‘caer[se]’, ‘morir[se]’, ‘tropezar[se]’ and ‘encallar[se]’), which optionally allow the clitic ‘se’ without any significant change of meaning. These verbs do not enter the transitive-inchoative alternation (i.e. they are non-anticausative). Besides, the presence of the clitic has little semantic contribution, if any at all. They are problematic because they cannot be integrated in existing analyses that account for other instances of pronominal verbs like anticausatives and reflexives. What I propose in this work is that these verbs optionally allow a complement low applicative phrase. Moreover, the clitic ‘se’ is thought of as a nominal item. This allows the integration of these verbs in broader analyses of pronominal verbs that consider the clitic a nominal item (whether argumental or expletive-like).

The article describes the properties of deverbal nouns (maṣdars) in Standard Arabic. Prior accounts identify the following type (qaṣfu l-ʿaduwwi li-l-madīnati), among others, but neglect the maṣdar that introduces its internal argument as a direct complement in the genitive case and its external argument as a prepositional adjunct (taḥrīru l-madīnati ʿalā yadi l-ǧayši). We argue that these two types reflect two different conceptu-alizations of 'events': bound-events, which describe a change that has taken place in the nature of a substance represented by the internal argument; and unbound-events, which describe a change in the relationship between the internal and external arguments. Within the lexical decomposition model, we propose a semantic basis for explaining constraints on direct transitive verbs according to (i) the type of maṣdars they form; (ii) the possibility of deriving a resul-tative passive participle (ism al-mafʿūl); and (iii) the alternation, for some verbs,...