On defining causativity and the significance of discourse information

Abstract

This article discusses the nature of causativity based on a set of Mandarin Chinese sentences where various lexical verb forms exhibit a unified semantic meaning of cause. We demonstrate that the sentences express a Cause/Causee relation in which only two internal semantic primitives, transition and force, are identified. We argue that the primitive meaning of force associated with Cause of these sentences is a process or activity rather than an entity. This indicates that Cause may present a pre-existing process or activity which constitutes the force of a causative event. This further leads us to the conclusion that causativity needs to be defined in a domain beyond the sentential boundary. We provide evidence to show how discourse information helps to interpret causative relations. The significance of our analysis lies in the claim that causativity is a dynamic relation which in certain languages needs to be defined on the basis of the inclusion of relevant discourse information. Our discussion also illustrates that causativity is a lexical-conceptual notion rather than a syntactically derived notion, hence an interface approach to the observed linguistic phenomena is justified