Some Remarks on The Morphology of Decausativization
João Paulo Lazzarini Cyrino (USP/FAPESP) - jpcyrino@usp.br
Since Chomsky (1995), the emergence of a syntactic category (little-v) responsible for
the projection of the external argument of a verb has been welcomed among the works on
generative theory. Although the original formulation of such category was as a licenser of a
verbal external argument, it didn't take too long to emerge a kind of little-v which comes in
two flavours: one that introduces an external argument and one that does not. One
consequence of this definition of v is that the absence or the presence of an external argument
of every verb must be licensed by the contents of v. In terms of morphology, it is expected
that such a model derives, basically, the causative/anticausative alternation type called
equipollent in Haspelmath (1993): "In equipollent alternations, both [causative and
anticausative counterparts of a verb] are derived from the same stem which expresses a basic
situation by means of different affixes, different auxiliary verbs or different stem
modifications." Languages that follow this pattern, at least, apparently are Greek and Japanese
(see 1).
This non-directed kind of marking the members of an alternation is not the most
popular among languages though. For instance, many languages derive anticausative
counterparts of a transitive verb by adding a clitic/affix to the transitive form (see 2).
Languages may also derive transitive verbs from a basic intransitive, non-causative form. In
contrast with decausativisation, which are only marked with clitcs or affixes (see Lazzarini
Cyrino, 2012), there is a relative freedom of form for causativization marks (see 3). Taking,
for instance, the corpus used by Haspelmath (1993) in his typology of the
causative/inchoative alternation, from 651 verbs spread among 21 languages only 20% (125
verbs) are considered equipollent. When the basic form predicted by a structure is found in
only 1/5 of the cases, some explanation must be provided about what is between such
structure and the surfacing output of its derivation that makes, in 4/5 of the cases, the latter
follow a different system from that one predicted by the former.
Recent approaches to morphology such as the Distributed Morphology theory, or
Minimalist approaches claiming a great part of the morphological operations are result of PF
requirements, say they won't have problems with that, by stating the disparity between the
predicted form from a structure and the surfacing system is a result of derivations held
between Spell Out and PF. In this work, however, I show such kind of analysis fail in
capturing essential characteristics of the morphological phenomenon of decausativization
marking: the necessary bound-form characteristic of such marks vs. the free form
characteristic of causativization marks, issues on ergativity and the transitive characteristics of
reflexives; besides the poor empirical support of a v-system, which derives only up to 1/5 of
what is seen among languages.
As an alternative, I present an expletive analysis of decausativization marks, based in
Schäfer (2008) and in the Late Insertion Principle of Distributed Morphology, concerned with
the hypothesis such expletive should be incorporated to the verb in order to surface. This
approach inserts itself in a program of researching explanatory adequacy in morphological
operations.
Examples and Tables:
(1)
(2)
Modern Greek
a. plén-i
wash-3rd.sg.ACTIVE
b. plén-ete
wash-3rd.sg.NON-ACTIVE
Japanese (Cf. Haspelmath, 1993)
a. atum-aru
gather-TRANSITIVE
b. atum-eru
gather-INTRANSITIVE
Directed Decausativization
Language
Portuguese
Clitic/
Affix
se
Russian
-sja
Arabic
ta-/in-
Hebrew
ni-/hit-
Otomi2
ni-
(3)
(CAUSATIVE)
(ANTICAUSATIVE)
Transitive
Intransitive
Language
quebrou
'broke'
otkryl
'opened'
quebrou-se
Turkish
Clitic/
Affix
-il-
otkryl-sja
Georgian
-i-
baddala
'change'
patah
'open'
tsih-ti
'swing'
ta-baddala
Finnish
ni-ftah
Udmurt1
-ua/utua
-sky-
Transitive
kaalu-c
Language
Indonesian
Mark
me-
faire
fondre
Cantonese
dou
(particle)
Transitive
Intransitive
yık-dı
'destroyed'
da-mal-a
'you hid x'
yık-ıl-dı
avata
'open'
vostyny
'change'
da-i-mal-a
'you
disappeared
ava-utua
vosi-sky-ni.
ni-tsih-ti
Directed Causativization
Language
Telugu
Mark
-c
French
faire
(v)
Intransitive
kaalu
'burn'
fondre
'melt'
Intransitive
tutup
'stop'
kong
'enlarge'
Transitive
me-nutup
dou
x
kong
'enlarge x'
References:
Chomsky, Noam (1995) The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press.
Haspelmath (1993) More on the typology of causative/inchoative verb alternations. In:
Comrie, B. & Polinsky, M. Causatives and Transitivity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schäfer, F. (2008) Middles as Voiced Anticausatives. E. Efner and M. Walkow (eds.),
Proceedings of NELS 37, 183 - 196. Amherst, MA: GLSA.
1
2
Uralic Language. See Haspelmath (1993).
Indigenous language from Mexico. See Maldonado (2009).