Towards a typology of word-level causatives

Abstract

The paper proposes that word-level causatives can be classified into two types, simplex causatives and complex causatives. Simplex causatives can be further classified into labile simplex causatives and non-labile simplex causatives, and complex causatives can be further classified into derivational, compounding, and inflectional complex causatives. It shows that it is possible for simplex causatives and some form of complex causatives to co-exist in a language. Moreover, the paper demonstrates that the existence of productive compounding/inflectional causatives tends to lead to the absence of a reasonable number of labile simplex causatives and that there is a functional basis for this. Finally, the paper shows that Chinese manifests a typological shift from the use of non-compounding word-level causatives to the use of productive compounding complex causatives.

Keywords:

• causative
• typology
• morphological
• simplex
• complex
• labile

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Ogbonna Anyanwu and Ndubuisi Ahamefula for their help with Igbo, to Lutz Marten for his help with Swahili, and to Hasan Kaili for his help with Turkish. I am also grateful to anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions, which have led to much improvement of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I will avoid using ‘lexical causative’ in later discussions due to the potential confusion it may cause. For example, in discussing Korean causatives, Song (2015: 99) uses the term to mean causatives that involve suppletion and ‘no formal similarity between the basic verb and the causative counterpart.’ However, Lee (1975) and Shibatani (1973b) use the same term, in also discussing Korean causatives, to mean unproductive morphological causatives derived with the addition of a derivational causative suffix.

2. The following abbreviations are used throughout: acc = accusative; asp = aspect; caus = causative; cl = classifier; dat = dative; do = direct object; fut = future tense; intr = intransitive; io = indirect object; mm = modifier marker; nom = nominative; pass = passive; perf = perfective; poss = possessive; sfp = sentence-final particle; top = topic; tr = transitive.

3. As can be seen in section 3, Old Chinese can be said to be another example of having a good number of both labile simplex causatives and derivational complex causatives.

4. In more exact terms, my ‘simplex causatives’ and ‘complex causatives’ are ‘word-level simplex causatives’ and ‘word-level complex causatives.’ Similarly, ‘word-level’ can be added to the terms for the subtypes of simplex causatives and complex causatives. However, as long as it is clear from the context, in the body of this paper ‘word-level’ is not added to the term for each type or subtype of word-level causatives so as to avoid clumsiness.

5. Song (2001b: 12) mentions that adverbials can be used in between faire and the verb following it. This, however, is still consistent with the claim that no NPs can occur in between the two components in question. Also, Song (2001b) classifies French causatives formed with faire as belonging to the COMPACT type. As mentioned above, they, in my view, should be better analyzed as phrasal-level causatives.

6. Song (2001b) discusses cases of COMPACT-type causatives that involve a free causing component, but he never relates such causatives to compounding.