On the Causative/Anti-Causative Alternation as Principle of Affix Ordering in the Light of the Mirror Principle, the Lexical Integrity Principle and the Distributed Morphology

Abstract

This contribution is organized as follows: in section 1, I propose a formulation of the Mirror Principle (MP) based on syntactic features; the examples will be taken from Causatives and Anti-Causatives that are derived by affixes (in Russian, Czech, Polish, German, English as compared to Japanese and Chichewa) by head-to-head movement. In section 2, I review some basic facts in support of a syntactic approach to Merge of Causatives and Anti-Causatives, proposing that theta roles are also syntactic Features that merge functional affixes with their stems in a well-defined way. I first try to give some external evidence in showing that Causatives and Anti-Causatives obey a principle of thematic hierarchy early postulated in generative literature by Jackendoff (1972; 43), and later reformulated in terms of argument-structure-ordering principle by Grimshaw (1990:chapter 2). Crucial for my paper is the working hypothesis that every syntactic theory which tries to capture the data not only descriptively but also explanatively should descend from three levels of syntactic representation: a-structure where the relation between predicate and its arguments (and adjuncts) takes place, thematic structure where the theta-roles are assigned to their arguments, and event structure, which decides about the aspectual distribution and division of events.

Voice Syncretism Crosslinguistically: The View from Minimalism

“…There are plenty of examples in which synthetic morphology appears in a designated passive, causative or reflexive construction (e.g., the Hebrew passive templates XuY ˆaZ and huXYaZ which, as described in Alexiadou and Doron [1], Kastner [4], Doron [110], have an exclusively passive interpretation without any idiosyncratic interpretations). What the generalization in (61) predicts is that analytic morphology will be associated with specific functions as illustrated by the English passive construction in (62) or the contrast between the Russian analytic perfective passive and synthetic imperfective passive in (63). The synthetic construction in (63a) is consistent both with a passive and with an anticausative interpretation, while the analytic construction in (63b) is exclusively passive.…”

“…When there is an understood agent, the focus is on the manner of the process, whereas when the non-active variant is understood as a pure anticausative, the focus is on the result state (cf. [60][61][62] for the causative/anticausative with a focus on Slavic). Other verbs behaving in a similar way are the verbs katastrepho 'destroy', skotono 'kill', kovo 'cut', keo 'burn', tsalakono 'crumble'.…”

“…-.PAST.DEC 'A salmon was caused by Mina to be eaten by a bear.' [97]: (61)(62) Analyzing the -I-morpheme as Voice in these environments accounts for the unavailability of a morphological causativized passive or a passivized causative. By contrast, for analytic causatives and passives we argue that there is a dedicated caus/pass head which merges on top of Voice, as we explain in the following section (see the configurations in (64)(65)).…”