Intransitive Causatives in English: productivity regularities and asymmetries

MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA; AUSENSI, JOSEP

Proceedings of Sinn un Bedeutung

Kontanz Universität- Open Journal Systems

Año: 2020 vol. 2 p. 38 - 55

2629-6055

We analyze a construction generally overlooked in the literature, with key implicationsfor the study of argument structure alternations and VP-internal configuration. Thisconstruction involves an object-less causative variant of change-of-state verbs (viz. IntransitiveCausatives). Unlike better-known monadic (inchoative/unaccusative) alternates, this constructionselects for an external argument, an inanimate entity, interpreted by default as probablecause of a change of state. Here, intransitivity correlates with noneventivity. Data suggest thatthis construction merely renders an Individual-Level Predication?basically, a subject bearingthe potential to eventually trigger an associated change of state as defining property. Basedon the pure stative behavior of such a construction (clearly seen in Romance and Greek, cf.Mangialavori Rasia in press), we show that eventivity is structurally achieved, and that stativeinstances of these verbs are possible in various languages (Alexiadou and Iord˘achioaia 2014;Mangialavori Rasia 2018). Such data argue against the prevalent view (Grimshaw 1990; Tenny1994) that verbs undergoing causative alternation involve change of state or eventive denotationas core part of their lexical meaning and that causative interpretation is a byproduct of transitivity(Hale and Keyser 2002). In the present paper, we shift the empirical focus to English andnote that English shows a productive regularity that deserves to be explored. Visible contrastswith null object constructions and related argument structure alternations (Null/UnspecifiedObject Alternations, Levin 1993 i.a.) allowed by these verbs are also revealed.