A Study on a Causative Construction of ‘X-key ha-ta’ from the Viewpoint of Construction Grammar

Abstract

This paper aims to characterize ‘X-key ha-ta’ as a kind of causative construction on the lexicon from the viewpoint of construction grammar. First of all, we observed that a meaning of this ‘ha-ta’ can be interpreted differently and this have no any specific lexical meaning depending on the context. This means that the linguistic unit to express a causative meaning is not ‘(-key) ha-ta’ verb but ‘X-key ha-ta’ construction itself. The distinguishing characteristics of this construction which support the claim of this paper are as follows: (1) Only some complex sentences with ‘X-key’ adverbial clause can be paraphrased as ‘X-key ha-ta’ construction, (2) The causer and the causee should be different, (3) The case marker combined with the causee can be alternated with other case markers, (4) The clausemate condition of the negative polarity item cannot be applied to ‘X-key ha-ta’ construction (5) Some of ‘X-key ha-ta’ constructions can be ambiguous, (6) Some adjective verbs which cannot be used as X of ‘X-key’ adverbial clause are used as X of ‘X-key ha-ta’ construction.