Causative constructions in Bezhta

Abstract

The causative constructions of Bezhta, a Nakh-Daghestanian language, display a range of crosslinguistically unusual non-causative effects. Standard causativization in Bezhta is compatible with intransitive, transitive, and affective verbs. However, the addition of causative morphology does not always form a construction with a new argument. When the resulting valency does not reflect the productive pattern of causative derivation, the verb is lexicalized. Lexicalization of this kind is not only common in affective verbs, but also in transitive verbs. Along with the non-causative use of causative suffixes, Bezhta presents the use of a more complex doubled causative suffix in the sense of a simple causative suffix: although this is common in typological terms, it is rare in the area under discussion. The present paper takes the notion of transitivity as central for explaining the formation of causative constructions in the language.