Causation in Polish anticausatives

2009

Heidinger, Steffen. 2015. Causalness and the encoding of the causative–anticausative alternation in French and Spanish. Journal of Linguistics., 2015

In French and Spanish, both parts of the causative-anticausative alternation can be formally encoded in two ways: depending on the form of the verb, marked and unmarked causatives and marked and unmarked anticausatives can be distinguished.

Studies in Polish Linguistics

The paper examines Object Experiencer (henceforth, OE)/Subject Experiencer (henceforth, SE) verb alternations in Polish in order to check whether Polish exhibits the causative/ anticausative alternation in the psych domain (psych causative alternation of Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014, henceforth A&I 2014). The focus is on two types of SE reflexive alternants of OE verbs, i.e., (i) SE forms with an obligatory instrumental case-marked DP derived from stative OE roots, and (ii) SE forms with an optional instrumental DP derived from eventive OE roots. It is argued that in both cases the reflexive SE alternants of either stative or eventive OE verbs have an obligatory or optional instrumental DP which acts as a complement and represents a Target/Subject Matter (henceforth, T/SM, cf. Pesetsky 1995), not a Cause. Therefore, the reflexive OE/SE verb alternation cannot be of the causative/anticausative type. Monovalent reflexive SE verbs, lacking an instrumental DP altogether, are unergative (Reinhart 2001), not unaccusative (contra A&I 2014). The overall conclusion reached in the paper is that the psych causative alternation is absent in Polish.

This paper investigates the periphrastic causative constructions of Lithuanian and Latvian on the basis of corpus data. It aims at compiling a preliminary list of basic and marginal verbs used in these constructions and describes the argument marking and the clause types used to express the caused events. On the basis of corpus data, the free forms employed in these constructions are ranked according to the frequency of their causative vs. non-causative use. It is shown that the main factitive construction is based on (pri-)versti in Lithuanian and likt in Latvian, while the most frequent model for the permissive construction is based on leisti in Lithuanian and ļaut in Latvian. The causees of the factitive constructions are marked by the accusative (with the most notable exception of Latvian likt), while the permissive constructions strongly prefer the dative. The caused events are expressed by infinitival or that-clauses and some reflexive causatives select participial complements.

Glossa: a journal of general linguistics

In this paper we will discuss cross-linguistic variation in semantic entailment patterns in causative alternations. Previous work has probed this issue with data from elicited semantic judgements on paired linguistic forms, often involving linguistic negation and contradiction. We contribute to the debate in the form of a related psycholinguistic experiment that taps into direct judgements of truth conditions based on visualized scenarios. The stimulus consisted of video sequences of agents causing events, and the task involved answering a Yes-No question based on the anticausative/inchoative alternant. We were therefore able to test two languages, Norwegian and English, with the very same stimuli and directly compare the judgements. Based on our results, we will argue that the causative alternation is qualitatively different in the two languages. More specifically, the results support an entailment relation between the causative and its anticausative counterpart in English, as predicted by the whole class of "causer-less" analyses in the literature. In contrast to this, our results support a reflexive analysis of anticausatives in Norwegian , where no such entailment holds.

2019

The paper examines Object Experiencer (henceforth, OE)/Subject Experiencer (henceforth, SE) verb alternations in Polish in order to check whether Polish exhibits the causative/ anticausative alternation in the psych domain (psych causative alternation of Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014, henceforth A&I 2014). The focus is on two types of SE reflexive alternants of OE verbs, i.e., (i) SE forms with an obligatory instrumental case-marked DP derived from stative OE roots, and (ii) SE forms with an optional instrumental DP derived from eventive OE roots. It is argued that in both cases the reflexive SE alternants of either stative or eventive OE verbs have an obligatory or optional instrumental DP which acts as a complement and represents a Target/Subject Matter (henceforth, T/SM, cf. Pesetsky 1995), not a Cause. Therefore, the reflexive OE/SE verb alternation cannot be of the causa-tive/anticausative type. Monovalent reflexive SE verbs, lacking an instrumental DP altogether , are unergative (Reinhart 2001), not unaccusative (contra A&I 2014). The overall conclusion reached in the paper is that the psych causative alternation is absent in Polish.

Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads, 2022

The (anti)causative alternation, that is, the alternation whereby languages contrast intransitive verbs expressing spontaneous events with transitive ones expressing externally caused events, has been the object of extensive language-specific and cross-linguistic studies. Within this type of alternation, marking on the intransitive member goes under the name of anticausative marking, while marking on the transitive member is causative marking. Historical research has mostly focused on causatives, while the diachrony of anticausative markers has largely been neglected. In the literature, only two possible cross-linguistic sources of anticausatives are mentioned: reflexive and passive markers. In this paper, I explore the sources of anticausative markers in a sample of 98 languages and show that they are much more varied than what is currently reported in the literature. Taking this richer diachronic evidence into account also sheds light on some yet controversial aspects concerning the relationship between anticausativization and reflexivity.

The main objective of this study is to compare the structure of the factitive construction expressing negative causation with dejar /deixar ('to let') in Ibero-Romance languages. It is generally accepted that Portuguese and Spanish exhibit a high degree of syntactic equivalence. However, the nature of the infinitive in the two languages is quite different, displaying more verbal characteristics in Portuguese than in Spanish. By means of a detailed empirical study, this article examines whether this structural difference has an effect on the syntax of the causatives with deixar and dejar. Indeed, statistically the selection of the different complement types (finite clause vs. infinitive, with an anteposed or postposed causee) differs substantially in the two languages. A multifactorial analysis shows to what extent the degree of dynamicity of the main constituents, namely the causer, the causee and the caused event, determine the syntactic variation in the two languages and how this variation can be linked to the different grammatical status of the infinitive.

Causatives and Anti-Causatives, Unaccusatives and Unergatives: Or How Big is the Contribution of the Lexicon to Syntax In this paper the features of externally and internally caused verbs have been described, and connected with the phenomenon of Unaccusativity. It was my approach to elaborate the relation between lexicon and syntax, including the concept of distributive morphol- ogy and the ROOT-semantics of verbs that do, resp. do not partake in causative alternation and Unaccusativity. The Causative Alternation served as criteria to distinguish between externally and internally (caused) causation; with its help the Unaccusativity verbs have been divided into two subclasses: alternating Unaccusativity (AU-) verbs and non-alternating Un- accusativity (NAU-) verbs. An alternative distinction between AU- and NAU-verbs has been found, namely the presence/absence of information about how the considered process was caused. Thereby the universal concept of encyclopedic lexica in the lan- guages English, German and Czech seems to assume at least four different ROOTS of verb as basis for classification of the anti-causativity-opposition: √agentive (murder, assassinate, cut), √internally caused (blossom, wilt, grow), √externally caused (destroy, kill, slay) and √cause unspecified (break, open, melt). Furthermore, it has been shown that unergative/causative pairs depict an independ- ent phenomenon and do not effect the considerations about CAL (in accordance with Alexiadou et al. 2006a, b and Marantz 1997; but not in accordance with Levin − Rap- paport Hovav 1995 and Reinhart 2000).

Semantics-Syntax Interface, 2014

In this paper I will analyze the causative‐anti causative opposition from the point of view of semantic construal, and how syntax builds structures following semantic instructions that convey that information, without adding or deleting information. I will use causativity to analyze the tension that rises when a putatively universal semantic construal, (narrow‐)syntactically instantiated, is to be materialized using limited, language‐specific resources. This will touch on the subject of language typology, and its importance to describe the observable effects of this tension between semantics and morpho‐phonology, already noticed by Tesniére (1959). Our theoretical proposal will take mutually consistent elements from Conceptual Semantics, Relational Semantics, Lexical Decomposition, and Minimalism, in the search for the simplest (yet, empirically adequate) theory of the syntax-semantics interface. Consequences for comparative linguistics will be suggested, with particular emphasis on Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages.

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 2019

This paper examines argument alternation constructions in the Bantu language, Kiwoso. The data demonstrates that alternation is constrained by selectional properties of a root and its combination with different functional heads, which is language specific. The findings establish that external arguments of anticausative, passive and middle alternations are distinct in terms of syntax and semantics. The data indicates that external arguments appear as DPs in causative alternates but in anticausative, passive and middle sentences they surface as PPs, albeit with different interpretations. In passives, the PPs are introduced by a na-phrase and express event participants, while in anticausatives and middles they are introduced by a kophrase which denotes event modifiers. It is also established that anticausative, passive and middle verb constructions are related in that their sole subject argument is the object argument of their causative (transitive) variants.

Anuario Del Seminario De Filologia Vasca Julio De Urquijo, 2013

Data obtained about the use of language for special purposes can be a valuable tool for checking theoretical predictions concerning semantics and syntax of certain kinds of verbs.

This article deals with Polish reflexive constructions of the type dom się buduje 'the/a house is being built'. They are traditionally described as passive but it is argued here that they could more adequately be described as extended anticausatives. They constitute a small, lexically restricted voice construction expressing delegated or anonymised agency. From a diachronic perspective this construction is interesting in that it shows a possible path of development from anticausative to passive.