INTRANSITIVE CAUSATIVES IN ENGLISH AND ROMANCE

MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA; AUSENSI, JOSEP

Illinois

Simposio; LSRL 51 Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages 51; 2021

University of Illinois

Intransitive Causatives in English and RomanceMaria Eugenia Mangialavori Josep AusensiCONICET UPFWe focus on Intransitive Causatives (ICs), an underexplored argument structure realization in verbs entering causative alternation, with key implications for argument structure and verb formation/derivation. We focus on the asymmetry between English (1) and Romance (2).(1) a. Smoking kills. b. Bleach disinfects. c. Alcohol dehydrates. d. Rice constipates.e. Shaving creams irritate. f. Sunlight oxidizes and discolors. g. Normal dryers wrinkle.(2) a. Fumar mata. b. La lejía desinfecta. c. El alcohol deshidrata. d. El arroz estriñe. e. Las cremas de afeitar irritan. f. La luz solar oxida y destiñe. g. Las secadoras arrugan.ICs feature an (inanimate) subject interpreted as possible cause of change of state (COS). Crucially, the undergoer is semantically and syntactically unrealized. ICs challenge major claims on argument structure: e.g., (i)the idea that the internal argument is an invariable constituent in the causative alternation (Haley & Keyser 2002); (ii)the prediction that unique arguments in COS verbs are, by default, undergoers (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 2005), as ICs show a defective cause interpretation of sole arguments in causative verbs is possible/natural.Properties. (a)ICs pattern as states: they cannot appear in perception reports or located in space (3) or license habitual readings (4), are odd in contexts forcing eventive readings (5), and modals generate epistemic (not deontic) readings (6) (Maienborn 2005, Rothmayr 2007).(3) a. #John saw smoking kill. (cf. I saw John kill Tom)b. #Shaving creams irritate in the bathroom.(4) a. Alcohol (#regularly) dehydrates. (cf. John regularly kills animals)b. Smoking (#regularly) kills.(5) a. #What the dryer did was wrinkle. (cf. What John did was kill animals)b. #What happened was that rice constipated.(6) a. Smoking must kill (OK It probably has property x | #It is under obligation to kill)b. John must kill Tom (# He probably has property x | OK He is under obligation to kill)(b)Like middles, ICs are restricted to generic tenses, as expected from states (*Smoking killed/#This vase broke easily). Further, both constructions pattern as dispositional generics in that they do not entail a deontic reading, but rather report a property of the subject (Lekakou 2015)(i.e., a state). IC sentences are true in virtue of the properties inherent to the subject, rather than whether there were actual events of the specific type in the past (cf. Chromic acid burns (that is why it has never been used before) and This vase breaks easily (that is why it is kept inside the box)). ICs and middles thus contrast with dispositional habituals that ?assert the existence of a pattern of regularly recurring events? (Krifka et al. 1995) (true insofar as there were actual helping events in the past, e.g., John helps homeless people). Yet, ICs differ from middles as the sole DP is not an internal but an external argument: hence, the property is not attributed to the undergoer, but to the cause(r). ICs reflect the definition of dispositional causation (Copley 2018) relating a disposer y (holder of a property), a dispositional state e, a manifestation e′, and a (nonepisodic) eventuality description p. This captures ICs restrictions: i.e., the cause(r) must have the relevant property to produce the COS of the verb (Fara 2001).(7) Dispositional causation: (a) y is the holder of e, (b) e is a state that directly causes e′ ceteris paribus, (c) e′ instantiates p (d) y is disposed toward p. (Copley 2018: 13)(c)The key difference between Romance and English lies in IC productivity: while Romance freely allows ICs from classes standardly related to the causative alternation like psych verbs, English has to make recourse to stative-attributive ing-predicates, suggesting nontrivial differences yet to be explained and raising questions on crosslanguage availability of ICs (8).(8) a. La playa cansa. (lit. *The beach tires) b. Tarantino aburre. (lit. *Tarantino bores)?The beach is tiresome/makes you tired.? ?Tarantino is boring/makes you bored.?In English, be-ing appears to be the default mechanism to denote that a cause(r) has potential to trigger COS (cf. La leche engorda ?Milk is fattening (≠is getting fat)? vs. ??Milk fattens). ICs are possible when be-ing does not yield IC interpretations: as be-ing is not available for dispositional causation, English resorts to the atransitive causative variant to express IC (9).(9) a. Sad movies are depressing. (OK Causational reading = #IC: #Sad movies sadden) b. Normal dryers are wrinkling. (#Causational reading = OK IC: Normal dryers wrinkle) (d)Even if genericity is a common property shared with another dyadic/monadic argument structure alternation (Unexpressed/Null Object alternations [UNOA], Levin 1993), ICs are clearly different (e.g. vs. Characteristic Property of Agent Alternation (10), Levin 1993) in: (i)verb type (activity/manner verbs in (10) vs. COS/result verbs in ICs); (ii)interpretive and selectional restrictions on the subject (animate/volitional actor in (10) vs. inanimate causer in ICs). Several facts indicate they constitute a radically different type of intransitive alternation. (10) a. This dog bites (#but hasn?t bitten anybody yet). b. Stand back! This horse kicks (#but hasn?t kicked anybody yet). (e)Unlike UNOA, ICs are not Null-Object constructions: ICs do not allow Null-Object-oriented depictives (11) (OK with null/arbitrary implicit arguments: Il dottore visita [] nudi, ?The doctor visits [] naked?, Rizzi 1996) and null object quantification (12) (e.g., bare molti, Italian). Ne-cliticization and inchoative/passive morphology (Romance) are also disallowed (13). Last, ICs fail to bind reflexive pronouns (vs. the anticausative (se-cl) form) (14). (11) a. *Smoking kills dead/depressed. b. John cooks healthy. c. John buys cheap. (12) a. *Smoking kills a lot. b. John eats a lot. c. John bought some. (13) a. Fumar (*en/*es) mata. b. El Joan en cuina/compra (cada dia). (Catalan) (14) a. Bad news sadden (*myself). b. Take a crepe. Cover one half with the jam. Fold [] over onto itself. (Massam & Roberge 1989) Proposal. We propose ICs are monadic (atransitive) realizations where the external-argument-introducing head responsible for the causative component is merely complemented, not by a theme, but by mere rhematic information (RhemeP, Ramchand 2008, 2013) √ specifying the COS potentially triggered by the subject (vP [DP CAUSE/TRIGGER [vINITº, RHEME √]). As for syntax-semantics interface and direct mapping between semantic (event) composition and argument structure realizations, ICs show that nonrealization of the internal argument correlates with lack of COS (sub)event instantiation (attributed to the internal-argument licensing head, Levin&Rappaport 1995; Hale&Keyser 2002). The noneventive denotation, along with pure stative behavior, simply follow. ICs crucially show that if there is no theme, there is no COS-event-encoding component in the semantic/syntactic makeup of the VP. This allow us to avoid a derived analysis of stativity, with direct empirical evidence and more parsimony (assuming economy is a result desirable in GG). Syntactically, it reveals that Property of Agent Alternations (10) and middles are not true argument structure alternations as they are alternate expressions of the same set of arguments: the former can be analyzed as Null/Unexpressed Object alternations, i.e., they are underlyingly transitive structures, while ICs behave instead as original monadic. We also note that, across languages, ICs appear in verbs denoting COS-caused state, rather than (manner of) action (Rappaport&Levin 2010). If the verb encodes a manner of action, and there is no possible state-like interpretation the subject is able to trigger, ICs fail and yield Property of Agent Alternation interpretations (10) in monadic frames (16). Namely, verbs like kill which only allow a result/state interpretation, freely allow both constructions depending on subject type (15). Conversely, verbs like murder cannot allow ICs as the verb makes references to both a manner and a result (Ausensi 2019) and only yield Property of Agent Alternation readings in monadic frames in consequence, as they restrict the subject to a specific type, an Agent in this case (cf. (10)).(15) a. John kills (impulsively). (Property of Agent alt.) b. Smoking kills. (IC)(16) a. CIA spies murder silently. (Property of Agent alt.) b. #This poison murders. (IC)ICs thus challenge the long-held constraint (Rappaport&Levin 2010) that COS verbs disallow unrealized theme (*John breaks) showing atransitive constructions with expected properties. Conclusion. ICs:●establish interesting crosslanguage regularities; ●reveal important structural (syn/sem) consistencies; ●raise questions on lexical coding of relevant features; ●uncover a necessary contrast within intransitive alternations (UNOA vs. true atransitive (IC)).