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Transitivity and Causation in Lushootseed Morphology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

David Beck
David Beck*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

The Salishan language Lushootseed shows an unusual pattern in its verbal morphology wherein its verbs are formed from intransitive, adjective-like roots via a highly productive set of suffixes, the bulk of which serve to increase the valency of their stem. These include the middle-marker, which forms intransitives, and several transitivizing affixes, which are shown here to be types of causative, their transitivizing effect being an expression of the causality inherent in the prototypical transitive event. In addition, the syntactic properties of the Lushootseed passive — formed by combining a transitivizing suffix with the middle-marker — can be analyzed as straightforward consequences of the meanings of the affixes that compose it. Treating Lushootseed causatives as subtypes of the transitive event model suggests that cross-linguistically transitive-causatives — as well as instrumentals and applicatives — may be subschematic extensions of the simple transitive clause, rather than derivations from more complex, biclausal structures.

Résumé

Résumé

La morphologie verbale du Lushootseed montre un patron inhabituel en ce sens que les verbes sont formés à partir de racines intransitives par l’ajout d’un ensemble très productif de suffixes dont la plupart servent à augmenter la valence verbale. Parmi ceux-ci, on retrouve le marqueur du moyen, qui sert à former les intransitifs, ainsi que plusieurs affixes de transitivisation, qui sont en fait des types de causatif, leur effet de transitivisation reflétant la causalité inhérente aux événements transitifs. Les propriétés syntaxiques du passif, formé par la combinaison d’un suffixe de transitivisation et du marqueur du moyen, peuvent être analysées comme découlant directement du sens des affixes qui le composent. Le fait de traiter les causatifs du Lushootseed comme des sous-types d’événements transitifs suggère que les causatifs transitifs, de même que les instrumentaux et les applicatifs, peuvent être analysés comme des extensions sous-schématiques de simples phrases transitives, plutôt que comme dérivés à partir de structures biphrastiques plus complexes.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 109 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1996

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