CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS: GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND MAJOR ISSUES

1. CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS: GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND MAJOR ISSUES Sajida Rehman,( srehma@essex.ac.uk) Reading: Paul Kroeger Analyzing Syntax: A Lexical Functional Approach, CUP, 2004. Chapter 8.

2. Introduction to the presentation: This presentation aims at: giving a general introduction to two different patterns of behaviour observed in languages, with specific reference to ‘morphological’ causatives. relating the behaviour of anaphoric relations within the causative clauses to provide the evidence for the f-structure of morphological clauses expanding Kroeger’s study to Urdu, a South Asian language, thus highlighting the major issues related with the study of causation.

3. ANAPHORICRELATIONS While considering the behaviour of anaphoric pronouns( myself, himself, themselves etc.), we should keep in mind three major issues: agreement domain prominence It is the ‘domain’ which is of great interest for our today’s discussion of causatives. The concept of ‘domain’ states that for reflexive binding, a reflexive pronoun must find an antecedent within its minimal clause.

4. For example: 1- Mary suspected that [ John admires himself/*herself too much.] 2- Mary waited for [John to excuse himself/*herself.] 3-I told you that [Mary would blame *myself/ /*yourself/herself.] In English, thus, reflexive pronouns follow the rule of ‘Clause- Boundedness.’ What implications this information has for our present data analysis?

5. Introduction to causation: Causation is a ‘valence increasing’ process. In Morphological causation, the causative form meaning ‘cause to X’ is derived from a basic predicate ‘X’ through a regular morphological process e.g., affixation. Thus, in many languages, there may be just one word conveying the meaning of two predicates, one of them being ‘cause’. Other causative construction types are Lexical (e.g. kill) and Periphrastic Causatives (e.g., cause to do s.t/make do s.t) which are both found in English. For example: 4-The player killed my cat. (Lexical Causative: just one entry word. How many clauses the construction has?) 5- The player made my cat die. (Periphrastic Causative: having two words to represent causation. How many clauses the construction has?)

6. FURTHER ON CAUSATION: In English there are NO such morphological processes for the derivation of causatives. The causer is almost always the subject of the causative constructions. Morphological causatives encode different grammatical relations to the ‘causee’. When the verb is intransitive from which we may derive a causative, the causee is assigned the primary object ‘OBJ’ status. If the verb is transitive, causee acts EITHER as: The primary object (OBJ), e.g., Swahili through verb agreement The oblique (OBL using a DAT case marker), e.g. Turkish trough case marking

7. FURTHER ON CAUSATION: According to Baker(1988) and Dryer(1996), the causee status can be predicted like this: FIRST POSSIBILITY:-if the recipient is expressed as a primary object or OBJ, the causee is also marked as OBJ. For example: Through verb agreement as in Swahili (Comerie,1976) a -Mscichana a-li-(u-)fungu-a mlaongo. girl S.agr-PAST-O-agr-open-INDIC door ‘The girl opened the door.’ b -Mwalimu a-li-m-fungu-zish-a msichana mlango. teacher S.agr-PAST-O-agr-open-CAUS-INDIC girl door. ‘The teacher made the girl open the door.’ (Evidence for primary status comes through ‘Passivization’ test, The girl…./but *The door was made to be opened by the by girl by teacher.’

8. SECOND POSSIBILITY:- if the recipient is expressed as an oblique (OBL)/OBJ2, the causee is also marked as OBL. (7) Through case marking, as in Turkish (Aissen,1974; Comerie,1981) a -Mudur mektub-u imzala-di director letter-ACC sign-PAST ‘The director signed the letter.’ b -Disci mektub-u mudur-e imzala-t-ti dentist letter-ACC director-DAT sign-CAUS-PAST ‘The dentist got the director to sign the letter.’ (8) Turkish (Aissen,1974) a -Kasap et-I kes-ti. butcher meat-ACC cut-PAST ‘The butcher cut the meat.’ b -Hasan Kasap-a et-i kest-tir-di Hasan butcher-DAT meat-ACC cut-CAUS-PAST ‘Hasan had the butcher cut the meat.’ (Passivization: The letter/The meat was made to be cut by Hasan…/but, *Hasan was…fails.

9. FURTHER ON CAUSATION The violation of the uniqueness condition , i.e. a single clause cannot possess more than one SUBJ, after the addition of the Causer in the morphological causative, the rule of the ‘next available GR’ makes causation work. Thus, to make things simple, let’s suppose if it was possible to find English equivalents to Turkish or Swahili causatives then our construction should look like the following: TURKISH: The teacher CAUS-Open the door-ACC the girl-DAT. SUBJ OBJ OBL Or I hit-CAUS Bill. ACC John. OBL ‘I made …………… hit ………………….. SWAHILI: The teacher O.CAUS-open girl Door. SUBJ OBJ OBJ2 ‘The teacher made the girl open the door.’

10. CAUSATIVE IN URDU: If we apply the following technique, we can analyse causatives in Urdu. Patients or the real primary objects in Urdu takes ACC-‘ko’ and the second object like entity takes the INST(instrumental) case, which functions as OBL. Thus, Meine Bill ACC. Ko John.INST. Se (OBL) marwaya. SUBJ. OBJ. OBL. hit-CAUS-PAST ‘I made ………….. hit……………. . • A LOGICAL QUESTION ARISES:- The English translation is possible with two verbs, while the two languages have just one verb. So how would it be possible to find out how many clauses each construction possesses?

11. CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS WITH ANAPHORIC RELATIONS: ENGLISH: Look more carefully at the data below: self self 1- I made John[…x…… hit Bill . ] SUBJ OBJ SUBJ OBJ X-COMP If replace with ‘…….self’, at John’s and Bill’s positions the results we get are: 2- I made John […x…… hit …himself.../*myself/. ] 3- I made …myself….. […x…… hit Bill . ] Explanation of 2 above shows that clause boundedness, makes it Possible for us to see how many clauses our constructions have. Thus, Tests with anaphors can be a good source of evidence for determining the number of clauses. English causatives are bi-clausal constructions.

12. URDU: The only reflexive we can replace in Urdu causative construction is ‘apne ap ko’ in position of ‘Bill.Ko’. Thus, Meine Bill ACC. Ko John.INST. Se (OBL) marwaya. SUBJ. OBJ. OBL. hit-CAUS-PAST Meineapne aapko ACC. John.INST. Se (OBL) marwaya. ‘I made ……john…….. hit……myself………. . Reflexive pronoun here refers back to the SUBJ. of the whole sentence, thus pointing out that the one verb causative constructions in Urdu (like in Turkish) are monoclausal.

13. The analysis So far : English has two verbs in causatives ,and is bi-clausal . Turkish/Urdu have one verb and their causatives constructions are monoclausal. But are things so simple? Chimwiini: (Bantu;Abasheikh,1979;cited in Marantz,1984) Mi ni-m-big-ish-ize John ru:hu-ya Isg. S.agr-O-hit-CAUS-ASP John self-3sg. ‘I made John hit himself. ‘ru:hu’ is OBJ, and Chimwiini is bi-clausal.

14. CONCLUSION: • Causative constructions in the world languages make use of either one or more verbs, but the number of clauses may not always co-ordinate with the number of verbs present in such constructions, giving rise to either mono-, or bi-clausal constructions. • The bi-clausal causative constructions contain two Subjects and two objects. • Anaphoric relations are a good source of determining the clause Structure of causative clauses.