Cover not available
Part of
The Form of Structure, the Structure of Form: Essays in honor of Jean Lowenstamm
Edited by Sabrina Bendjaballah, Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi and Nicola Lampitelli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 12] 2014
► pp. 333–348

Causatives, anticausatives and lexicalization

| University College Dublin
Moroccan Arabic has many transitive verbs that are causative in form and meaning but lack intransitive variants that are non-causative in form and meaning. Instead, the non-causative intransitive use of these verbs requires morphosyntactic derivation by anticausativization. This article explores the hypothesis that the causative verbs in question may not derive from abstract roots via non-attested non-causative forms, but rather, from lexicalizations with a fossilized causative form. Moreover, they appear to be the manifestation of a broader typological tendency that invites alignment with detransitivizing languages, which lexicalize transitive forms and derive intransitive variants by anticausativization (Nichols et al. 2004).
Published online: 17 December 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.12.26ouh
References (20)
References
Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Florian Schäfer. 2006. “The Properties of Anticausatives Crosslinguistically.” In Phases of Interpretation, ed. by Mara Frascarelli, 187–211. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arbaoui, Norelhouda. 2010. Les dix formes de l’arabe classique à l’interface syntaxe/phonologie. Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris 7-Diderot.Google Scholar
Croft, William A. 1991. Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 2004. “A Semantics for Unaccusatives and its Syntactic Consequences.” In The Unaccusativisity Puzzle, ed. by Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Martin Everaert, 22–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doron, Edit. 2003. “Agency and Voice: The Semantics of Semitic Templates.” Natural Language Semantics 11: 1–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 2012. Key Features and Parameters in Arabic Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grimshaw, Jane. 1982. “On the Lexical Representation of Romance Reflexive Clitics.” In The Internal Representation of Grammatical Relations, ed. by Joan Bresnan, 87–148. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Guerssel, Mohamed. 1987. “On Berber Verbs of Change: A Study of Transitivity Alternations.” Lexicon Project Working Papers #9. Centre for Cognitive Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J., and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koontz-Garboden, Andrew. 2009. “Anticausativisation.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 27: 77–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levin, Beth, and Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 1998. “Morphology and Lexical Semantics.” In Handbook of Morophology, ed. by Andrew Spencer, and Arnold Zwicky, 248–271. Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
. 2005. Argument Realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lowenstamm, Jean. 2007. “On Little n, ROOT, and Types of Nouns.” In The Sounds of Silence: Empty Elements in Syntax and Phonology, ed. by Jutta Hartmann, Veronika Hegedus, and Henk van Riemsdijk, 105–144. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Nichols, Johanna, David Peterson, and Jonathan Barnes. 2004. “Transitivizing and Detransitivising Languages.” Linguistic Typology 8: 149–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ouhalla, Jamal. 2011. “Categorization and the Interface Levels.” In Interfaces in Linguistics: New Research Perspectives, ed. by Raffaella Folli, and Christiane Ulbrich, 116–134. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2012a. “Lexical Change and the Structure of the Lexicon.” In Of Grammar, Words and Verses, ed. by Esther Torrego, 41–66. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012b. “The Development of Future Markers in Root-frames and Satellite-frames: Arabic and French GO(ING) versus English and Berber GO(ING)+TO.” Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 29: Grammaticalization in Semitic, ed. by Domenyk Eades, 3–30.Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya, and Tal Siloni. 2005. “The Lexicon-syntax Parameter: Reflexivization and Other Arity Operations.” Linguistic Inquiry 36: 389–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 1990. “Semantic Parameters of Split Intransitivity.” Language 66: 221–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Tallas-Mahajna, Naila & Esther Dromi
2024. Arabic morpheme per utterance: a morphological measure of child language development in spoken Arabic. Language Acquisition 31:2 ► pp. 130 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.