Causatives in Agul

Abstract

The paper considers morphology, morphosyntax and semantics of causative formation in Agul, a Lezgic language of Southern Daghestan (Russia). In Agul, the two most frequent causative patterns, periphrastic and compound causatives, apparently share one source of grammaticalization. The former are combinations of 'do' with the infinitive of the lexical verb, while the latter put them together as two bound stems. However, semantically 'do'-compounds belong with non-productive causatives (labile verbs and lexical causatives) and are opposed to fully productive periphrastic causatives. All non-productive causativesonly available for intransitive verbs-have parallel periphrastic 'do'-causatives, the distinction between the parallel forms conveys the semantic contrast of direct vs. indirect causation. The paper makes an attempt at decomposing these typological categories into simpler components (intentionality, physical interaction, event structure), and provides a detailed semantic analysis of labile verbs and semantically irregular causatives. Periphrastic causatives are peculiar in their own way: they may introduce locative or ergative Causee, the choice depending on the degree of the Causee's control over the caused situation. Basing on this morphosyntactic variability, we argue that periphrastic causatives are intermediate between bi-and monoclausal constructions. * This article is based on two papers read in Kazan at LENCA II conference in June, 2004 and in Moscow at the Workshop on verbal derivation (the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences) in May, 2005. A shorter Russian version has been published as (Daniel, Maisak & Merdanova 2008). We are grateful to Ekaterina Lyutikova and Alexander Letuchiy for a discussion of the manuscript; and to the editors of this volume for their important comments. ** The author's work was supported by the Program for Fundamental Studies (Higher School of Economics). 1. Solmaz Merdanova lived in Huppuq' as a child and is trilingual in Agul, Lezgian and Russian. She is the source of all elicited examples. Examples that are not marked as elicited are natural utterances coming from the Agul Electronic Corpus of spontaneous narratives and dialogues collected in 2004-2008 in Huppuq' and Makhachkala by Dmitry Ganenkov, Timur Maisak and Solmaz Merdanova. 'When children are teasing him, doing all sorts of things to him, he throws his stick, makes them run away. ' (2) Intransitive (two arguments), elicited malla nesredin.a pːačːah gada.ji-q Mullah Nasreddin(erg) king boy-post quχ.a-s q'.u-ne believe.ipf-inf do.pf-pft 'Mullah Nasreddin made so that the king believed the boy. ' (e.g. confirmed the boy's words) (3) Intransitive (experiencer verbs), elicited baw.a-s ag w .a-s q'.u-ne-wa wun jarħun? mother-dat see.ipf-inf do.pf-pft-q you.sg(erg) wound 'Why, you let your mother see your wound?!' (the addressee was not supposed to let his/her mother see the wound in order not to make her upset) (4) Transitive …uč.i alčat.u-na sara-tː.i-w self(erg) set.on.pf-cvb other-nmlz-apud ...

Lability in Western Peninsular Spanish

“…Ramchand () has found the same pattern in Hindi and Urdu; and, Daniel et al. () state that Agul, a language from the Caucasus, selects a periphrastic causative construction to express less control on the causee but it chooses a lexical strategy if there is more control. Kim () affirms that in Korean the causer is not the same as the agent and the case‐marking of a causative construction depends on the volition of the subject and the affectedness of the object.…”

Morphological fusion without syntactic fusion: The case of the “verificative” in Agul

“…(Agul, Huppuq' dialect; elicited example) There is no differential subject marking in Agul, 25 so dative subject encoding is the only option for the verb 'see', just as ergative subject encoding is the only 25 Variation in subject encoding is only found in Agul causatives, where either the original absolutive/ergative or the locative encoding of the causee is possible (cf. Section 2.1 and Daniel et al 2012), and in the Involuntary Agent construction, where the agent is marked by the locative case rather than the ergative (Ganenkov et al 2008); neither of these marking variations, however, is relevant to experiential verbs.…”

Patrones de ergatividad en el español peninsular

“…Los acusativos expresan mayor control frentes a los instrumentales que, por lo general, se interpretan como carentes de volición y control (véase 29-30, tomados de Hetzron 1976 Asimismo, este autor pone de manifiesto que hay una distinción entre el agente y el autor de una causa: mientras la autoría no implica intención, la agentividad sí. Ramchand (2011) ha descubierto el mismo patrón en hindi y urdu y Daniel et al (2012) aseguran que en agul, una lengua caucásica, se selecciona una construcción causativa perifrástica para expresar menor control sobre lo causado y se elige una estrategia léxica si hay más control. Kim (2012) afirma que, en coreano, el causante no es lo mismo que el agente y la marca de caso de una construcción causativa depende de la volición del sujeto y la afectación del objeto.…”