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Causalness and the encoding of the causative–anticausative alternation in French and Spanish1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2015

STEFFEN HEIDINGER
STEFFEN HEIDINGER*
Affiliation:
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
*
Author’s address: Institut für Romanistik, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Merangasse 70/III, 8010 Graz, Austria[email protected]
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Abstract

In French and Spanish, both parts of the causative–anticausative alternation can be formally encoded in two ways: Depending on the form of the verb, marked and unmarked causatives and marked and unmarked anticausatives can be distinguished. The goal of this paper is to verify whether causalness is a factor in the encoding and whether the two languages differ in this respect (verbs used more often as causatives than as anticausatives have a high degree of causalness, while verbs used more often as anticausatives than as causatives have a low degree of causalness). On the basis of a corpus study of 20 French and 20 Spanish verbs, it will be shown that in both languages a strong correlation between causalness and encoding exists. A high degree of causalness increases the likelihood that a verb’s anticausative is marked and the causative is unmarked, and a low degree of causalness increases the likelihood that a verb’s anticausative is unmarked and the causative is marked.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , 01 November 2015 , pp. 562 - 594
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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