Abstract
The causative alternation has been recognised in the linguistic literature as one of the most widely spread linguistic phenomena, attested in almost all languages, although differently realised and involving partially different sets of verbs. In this paper, we identify the degree of spontaneity of the event described by a verb as a general component of meaning of alternating verbs which underlies the within-language and cross-linguistic variation in their realisations. We first establish that a corpus-based measure of this property, the ratio of the frequency of usage of the causative and anticausative form, is strongly correlated to an independent typological measure (Haspelmath, 1993). Then we examine the influence of this property on the cross-linguistic realisations of verbs. We find that the degree of variation and parallelism in forms across languages is strongly related to the degree of spontaneity of the verb.
Highlights
The term causative(/inchoative) alternation refers to the fact that some verbs can be realised in a sentence both as transitive (1a) and as intransitive (1b), where both versions express the same event, with the causer only dierence being that the transitive version species the of
We identify the degree of involvement of an external causer in an event described by a verb as a general component of meaning of lexical causatives which underlies all the observed behaviours of these verbs, including the cross-linguistic variation
In analysing cross-linguistic variation in realisations of lexical causatives, we try to determine whether a verb can be expected to have consistent or inconsistent realisations across languages depending on the degree to which an external causer is involved in the event described by the verb
Summary
The term causative(/inchoative) alternation refers to the fact that some verbs can be realised in a sentence both as transitive (1a) and as intransitive (1b), where both versions express the same event, with the causer only dierence being that the transitive version species the of. The fact that the alternation is not possible even though the participant bread is undergoing a change is explained by idiosyncratic lexical propcut erties of the verb ( ) such that it requires expressing the causer (Levin and Rappaport Hovav, 1994). We identify the degree of involvement of an external causer in an event described by a verb as a general component of meaning of lexical causatives which underlies all the observed behaviours of these verbs, including the cross-linguistic variation. We call this property the degree of spontaneity. Guages is strongly related to the degree of spontaneity of the verb
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