On causatives – A comparison between European Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

Based on the caused eventuality, causation can be subdivided into the causation of activity and causation of change of state. By analyzing how causatives are expressed in European Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese, this study shows that these two languages exhibit quite many differences in expressing causation of change of state. We observe that many Portuguese verbs that intrinsically involve causative meanings do not have Chinese equivalence in simplex verb forms – their Chinese counterparts may take complex forms, including a construction we call Causative Resultative V-Vs (CR V-Vs). Differences are also found in the derivational process: whereas anticausation plays a significant role in Portuguese, causation is the primary process in Chinese. We attribute the contrast to different semantics of verb roots in the two languages: Portuguese exhibits plenty of result roots that can intrinsically express caused-result meanings; in contrast, Chinese roots tend to denote either a pure activity or a pure (change of) state, and a causative structure is needed to express causative meanings.