This section is concerned with derivational approaches to the causative-‐inchoative al-‐
ternation. It is structured as follows. In Sect. 5.1.1, I introduce the main properties of the alternation. In Sect. 5.1.2, I review the formal encoding of the alternation from a cross-‐linguistic perspective and consider the role morphological markedness has played in determining the directionality of derivation. Next, I look into a number of theoretical accounts of the alternation and discuss some problems they run into. Fi-‐
nally, on the basis of the findings in Ch. 4, I argue that causatives and inchoatives are derived from a common underspecified root, paving the way for the discussion on the alternation in Maltese in Sect. 5.2.
5.1.1 The alternation
The causative-‐inchoative alternation characterizes pairs of verbs standing in a semantic relation to each other, where the inchoative verb is intransitive and typically expresses a change of state, and the causative verb is transitive and typically denotes a bringing about of this change of state. The following examples from English illustrate the para-‐
digm that has been at the center of much typological and theoretical discussion:
(1a) The boy broke the glass. causative
(1b) The glass broke. inchoative
One prominent feature of the alternation pattern [NP2 V NP1 // NP1 V] is that the sub-‐
ject of the intransitive alternant bears the same semantic relation to the verb as the ob-‐
ject of the transitive. The transitive member of the pair expresses a causative event, while its intransitive counterpart expresses an event in which an external cause need not be assumed or is irrelevant. The transitive subject causes some sort of change in the direct object, and has the semantic role of agent or actor. The intransitive subject is un-‐
derstood as self-‐causing or self-‐affecting.
Formally, researchers (e.g., Dowty 1979; Pinker 1989; Jackendoff 1990; Levin &
Rappaport Hovav 1995; Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1998; and others) make use of lexi-‐
cal semantic representations to spell out the internal architecture of a verb’s meaning.
Following one core assumption in decompositional lexical semantics, I draw on CAUSE
and BECOME as operators that factor out the relations between events as well as states.
The representation or template assigned to causative verbs makes explicit two subevents, a causing and a change of state subevent, which are connected by the rela-‐
tion CAUSE:
((∝) CAUSE (BECOME (x <STATE>)))
Hence, sentence (1a) above is represented as ((The boy ACT) CAUSE (BECOME (glass <BRO-
KEN>))). The events described by inchoative verbs are conceptualized as having no ex-‐
ternal cause. Accordingly, the lexical semantic template of an event such as (1b) above has a simple structure of only one subevent (Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1998; McKoon &
Macfarland 2000):
(BECOME (x <STATE>)))
Other than break, examples of verbal concepts that frequently display the causa-‐
tive-‐inchoative contrast in the world’s languages include boil, close, freeze, improve, melt, open, sink (cf. Haspelmath 1993; Levin 1993; Nichols, Peterson & Barnes 2004;
Comrie 2006). In general, verbs undergoing the alternation have a stable semantic core.
They primarily denote change of states, as the above examples. Some are verbs of movement, such as bounce, roll, spin. Assuming these verbs of motion express a change in location, we can subsume them under the notion of change of state.
Since not all change of state verbs alternate (recall the discussion in Ch. 4 on in-‐
choatives that lack a transitive counterpart, and causatives that stand on their own, without a corresponding inchoative), one issue that has been the subject of much dis-‐
cussion in linguistic theory concerns the meaning components of change of state verbs that determine whether they will participate in the alternation or not (cf. Smith 1970;
Hale & Keyser 1986; Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995; Reinhart 2000, 2002; inter alia).
With the underlying assumption that verbs undergoing the same alternation sets constitute a semantically coherent class, Levin (1993: 27-‐33) distinguishes three cate-‐
gories of what she calls “causativity alternations”: (i) causative-‐inchoative verbs, (ii) induced action verbs (She walked the horse – The horse walked), and (iii) a general cate-‐
gory of other types of verbs that enter the transitivity alternation (The nurse burped the baby – The baby burped). On my account, the second and third categories are regarded as instances of the causative-‐noncausative alternation. In spite of the similarities be-‐
tween the causative-‐inchoative and the causative-‐noncausative alternation, the latter
will not be further discussed in this chapter, as the two structures involve slightly dif-‐
ferent phenomena, as argued in Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995: 113ff.) and Reinhart (2002), among others (see also the discussion in Sect. 4.2.1.2 on differences between inchoatives and noncausatives). From a typological point of view, Schäfer (2009) argues that the causative-‐inchoative alternation is “a widespread, probably universal phe-‐
nomenon”, while the causative-‐noncausative alternation is “clearly restricted to a sub-‐
set of languages.” It should, however, be kept in mind that the relation between the two argument alternations remains an unsettled topic (cf. Doron 2003; Schäfer 2009; inter alia).
The alternation is sensitive to the kind of theme argument the verb takes. That is, it is not always the case that verbs which occur transitively with certain arguments have an intransitive counterpart, and vice versa (cf. Levin & Rappaport-‐Hovav 1995: 85, 105;
Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer 2006; Koontz-‐Garboden 2009: 90-‐1; Schäfer 2009). Consider the following examples:
(2a) The girl broke the vase/toaster.
(2b) The vase/toaster broke.
(3a) The boy broke his promise/the world record.
(3b) *His promise/The world record broke.
The same verb takes part in the alternation in (2) but not in (3). While entities like vases, toasters, and windows can undergo a breaking event both as the object of a causative and the subject of an inchoative, entities like promises, world records, and contracts cannot undergo such a change of state event as the subject of an inchoative, at least not in English. Corpus-‐based and cognitive approaches (e.g., Montemagni 1994;
Montemagni & Pirelli 1995; Montemagni, Pirelli & Ruimy 1995; McKoon & Macfarland 2000; Thepkanjana 2003) show that selectional restrictions for the subject of intransi-‐
tives and the object of transitives are not always identical, in particular with idiomatic senses of verbs and figurative meaning extensions, namely metaphor and metonymy.
Semantically, verbs entering the causative-‐inchoative alternation tend to consti-‐
tute one class, i.e. (non-‐agentive) verbs of change of state. Formally, however, they are very diverse. Typological investigation has shown that there is considerable variation in the morphological marking of the alternation across languages. Consider the event of burning and opening in these four different languages, in (4)-‐(7), taken from Haspel-‐
math (1993).
Marking on the causative:
(4) (Khalka) Mongolian ongoj-lg-ox ‘open, v.t’
ongoj-x ‘open, v.i’
(5) Hindi-‐Urdu jal-aa-naa ‘burn, v.t’
jal-naa ‘burn, v.i’
Marking on the inchoative:
(6) Arabic fataħa ‘open, v.t’
in-fataħa ‘open, v.i’
(7) (Modern) Greek kéo ‘burn, v.t’
kéome ‘burn, v.i’
While in the verb pairs from Arabic and Greek the inchoative member bears more mor-‐
phology than the causative one, in the examples from Mongolian and Hindi-‐Urdu it is the causative verb that is morphologically more complex. Morphological variation in the formal encoding of the alternation is found also within the same language. For in-‐
stance, for the verbal concept of spreading, in Mongolian it is the inchoative alternant that is marked by special morphology (delge-r-ex ‘spread, v.i’), while the causative is unmarked (delg-ex ‘spread, v.t’), in contrast to the coding of the notion of opening, cf.
(4) above.
5.1.2 On the typology of causatives and inchoatives
With the above as background, I now briefly review the literature on the typological variation in the morphological marking of causative-‐inchoative pairings. Following that, I take a look at theoretical accounts that, despite the morphological differences across and within languages, claim that all alternating verbs start off either from an inherently causative verb or from a basically inchoative verb. After considering the problems these approaches are faced with, I offer a solution along the lines of Embick (2004a, b), Pylk-‐
känen (2008) and other syntactic approaches, arguing that verbs undergoing the causa-‐
tive-‐inchoative alternation are derived from a common root. Finally, I attempt to bridge the gap between the mismatch of the root-‐based approach taken in this study and the iconic association of morphological markedness with directionality of derivation.
Haspelmath (1993)
As mentioned above, there are many ways cross-‐linguistically of effecting the alterna-‐
tion morphologically. Haspelmath (1993) provides a comprehensive survey of such formal types. Comrie (2006), then, builds on this analysis by establishing a profile for each language based on the marking of verbal notions, and by tracing the historical sta-‐
bility of patterns of causative-‐inchoative pairings in the lexicon. In this section, I give an overview of the first cross-‐linguistic investigation. Comrie’s study is discussed in some detail in Sect. 5.2.
Haspelmath’s typological approach has twofold significance. In dealing with the formal encoding of causative and inchoative pairs in terms of morphological marked-‐
ness, the study draws conclusions about lexical semantic restrictions on the verbs that enter the alternation. I now briefly review both aspects of the work.
Cross-‐linguistically, the relationship between causative and inchoative verbs with a common lexical meaning is marked with affixes, stem modification, suppletion, and other means. Haspelmath approaches the transitivity alternation from the perspective of morphological complexity: the alternant carrying less morphology is simple or basic while the alternant taking extra morphology is considered derived. Basing his analysis on morphological direction of derivation, he proposes a classification of formal rela-‐
tions in causative-‐inchoative verb pairs.
A distinction is first made between directed pairs, in which one member is derived from the other, and non-directed pairs, where there is no greater morphological mark-‐
ing on either member. Directed pairs are further subdivided into causative and anti-
causative alternations. In causative alternations, the causative member is morphologi-‐
cally more marked than the inchoative, as in (4) and (5) above. Conversely, in anti-‐
causative alternations, the inchoative member is morphologically more marked than the causative, as in (6) and (7) above. There are three non-‐directed types, illustrated by examples from Maltese: labile, where the same form is used both as causative and in-‐
choative (e.g., għama ‘blind’ – għama ‘go blind’); equipollent, where neither member is more complex than the other, but the forms differ (e.g., faqqar ‘make poor’ – ftaqar ‘be-‐
come poor’); suppletive, where different lexical items with different argument struc-‐
tures are used (e.g., qatel ‘kill’ – miet ‘die’).
From an investigation of a set of 31 verbal notions that can be construed both causatively and inchoatively across 21 languages, Haspelmath draws two interrelated generalizations, which are concerned with the idea that morphological patterns are sensitive to the kind of event named by the verbs in question. According to the first
conclusion, the semantic properties of verbs impose a constraint on whether verbs can participate in the causative-‐inchoative alternation or not. The claim is that verbs can be placed along a cline, going from those most likely to be conceptualized as occurring spontaneously (e.g., laugh, bloom) to those that are more easily conceived as occurring through the initiation of an external force (e.g., wash, decapitate). The most likely can-‐
didates to take part in the causative-‐inchoative alternation are those lying closer to the middle than to the ends of this gradient, that is, verbs that are intrinsically neither agent-‐oriented nor self-‐causing.
The second generalization concerns the relationship between morphological com-‐
plexity and this cline or “scale of increasing likelihood of spontaneous occurrence”, as Haspelmath (1993: 105) labels it. Events such as breaking, closing, splitting, and gather-‐
ing, which are typically instigated by an external agent, are predicted to pattern with anticausative formations, that is, their more marked form is the intransitive. Events un-‐
likely to be directly causable from an external agent are expected to show a preference for the causative alternation, i.e. for pairs whose morphologically marked form is the transitive one. Among the events that belong to this group are melting, freezing, and drying.
In Maltese, Haspelmath’s prediction is borne out to a great extent, as shown in Sect. 5.2. The notion of melting presents an interesting case in Maltese, where it may be expressed by either of two (contextually) synonymous verb pairs: dab (v.i.) – dewweb (v.t.) and inħall (v.i.) – ħall (v.t.). While the first pair, as predicted, patterns with the causative alternation, the second one shows the opposite direction of derivation. Note that Haspelmath offers general typological tendencies in the lexicalization of causative-‐
inchoative pairs and does not predict the behavior of any given verb in any given lan-‐
guage. Even though the notion of spontaneous occurrence is quite vague and in need of elaboration, there seems to be some degree of parallelism between the scale he pro-‐
poses and transitivity gradients put forward by Hopper & Thompson (1980) and other researchers (cf. McMillion 2006: 20). The distinction between self-‐causing events and eventualities with external agents receives more attention in Sect. 5.2.
Note that this analysis differs from my account of the causative-‐inchoative alterna-‐
tion in two ways. First, in Haspelmath’s study, verbs, not roots, are taken as the basic elements in the lexicon. Second, it assumes that for a given pair of morphologically re-‐
lated verbs, the member that bears more morphological material is derived from the less complex verb. Since under my approach all verbs are composite entities, there is always the possibility that the morphologically simple and the morphologically complex
verb are derived not from each other, but from an underlying root. Indeed this is the conclusion drawn Ch. 4. Below, I identify points of convergence between the two appar-‐
ently conflicting analyses.
Theoretical approaches
In the studies delineated above, it is generally assumed that verbs entering the causa-‐
tive-‐inchoative alternation are derivationally related. Not surprisingly, one issue that has received much attention in the literature on the alternation concerns the deriva-‐
tional relationship among causative and inchoative verb pairs: which alternant is basic and which one is derived? Two main views have been put forward: causativization and detransitivization. Let us review both proposals briefly.
For various researchers (e.g., Lyons 1968; Lakoff 1970; Pinker 1989; Jackendoff 1990; Ramchand 2008), alternating verbs have a monadic lexical semantic representa-‐
tion, i.e. they lack an implicit external argument, and causatives are derived from in-‐
choatives via causativization or transitivization. The lexical semantic structure of in-‐
choatives is simple, as they are conceptualized as having no external cause (cf. Sect.
5.1.1). Because they have fewer participants and contain less information, inchoatives are taken to be less complex than causatives, whose structure consists of both a causing and a change of state subevent. Through an operation of causativization, in lexicalist theories (e.g., Hale & Keyser 1986), a causative predicate is added to the lexical repre-‐
sentation of the anticausative base.
According to the second view, the order of derivation is reversed. One such influ-‐
ential analysis, which has it that inchoatives are derived from basically dyadic causa-‐
tives via deletion of the CAUSE operator, is Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995: Ch. 3). They argue that the lexical semantic representation is dyadic for both causatives and in-‐
choatives. Inchoatives are derived from their causative counterparts by means of a rule of detransitivization, which consists in the “lexical binding” of the causer argument of the causative verb. The causer argument is present in the lexical conceptual structure but not at the level of argument structure of the inchoative verb. It is bound in the map-‐
ping from lexical semantic representation to argument structure and is therefore pre-‐
vented from being projected into the syntax. In other words, although causatives and inchoatives have the same lexical semantic representation, they differ in their argument structure: causatives are dyadic, inchoatives are monadic due to the lexical binding of the causer argument.
Other studies that advocate a detransitivization analysis include Grimshaw (1981)
and Reinhart (2000, 2002). Starting with the observation that there is widespread syn-‐
cretism between reflexive and anticausative morphology (e.g., Romance reflexive clitics), Chierchia (2004) and Koontz-‐Garboden (2009) propose a reflexivization analy-‐
sis of anticausativization. Under this analysis, inchoatives are underlyingly transitive and are derived by a process of reflexivization. While this analysis caters for the fact that reflexive morphology is often found with anticausatives, it has been the subject of criticism. From a morphological point of view, it runs into the problem of accounting for passive/anticausative syncretism that is found in language after language, as no analy-‐
sis successfully achieves to reduce passives to reflexivization. On the semantic side, it is not always conceivable to interpret anticausatives (e.g., the boat sank) reflexively (as
‘(some property) of the boat sank the boat’), especially when dealing with such exam-‐
ples as the anticausative for ‘to be born’, which would be represented as ‘give birth to oneself’ (cf. Doron 2003; Piñón 2001b; inter alia).
Derivational approaches have been questioned for two main reasons (cf. Alex-‐
iadou, Anagnostopolou & Schäfer (2006) and Alexiadou (2006) for detailed criticism).
First, not all causative verbs have an inchoative counterpart, and vice versa, as it was shown in Ch. 4. In such cases, verbs would have to be derived from a corresponding hy-‐
pothetical base or from some abstract verb which is “frozen”, as in Chierchia 2004. Sec-‐
ond, even if one had to take only alternating verbs into account, there would still be a mismatch between the assumed derivational and overt morphological complexity, given the cross-‐linguistic variation found in the formal encoding of the alternation (cf.
Haspelmath 1993; Piñón 2001a, 2001b; Alexiadou, Anagnostopolou & Schäfer 2006;
Sect. 5.1.2). Crucially, both views, causativization and detransitivization, do not do jus-‐
tice to the crosslinguistic variation in the morphological marking of the alternation.
Moreover, these approaches leave unexplained the fact that in Maltese causative and inchoative templatic verbs display morphonological and semantic behavior that are not typical of verb derivation, as discussed next.
Where do causatives and inchoatives come from?
In spite of the morphological variation found cross-‐linguistically, derivational studies generally assume there is one direction of (syntactic) derivation for all alternating verbs. However, in Ch. 4, I discussed evidence that templatic verbs undergoing the causative-‐inchoative alternation are both derived from category-‐neutral roots by dif-‐
ferent verbalizing heads. It was shown that causatives and inchoatives may both in-‐
volve:
• gaps, i.e. causatives sometimes lack an inchoative counterpart, and vice versa;
• vocalic variation, i.e. alternating verbs may have different vowel sequences, e.g., għereq ‘drown, v.i’ – għarraq ‘drown, v.t’;
• morphological markedness, i.e. causatives may be more complex than in-‐
choatives, and vice versa (it is also possible that both are equally complex or that they have the same form);
• relative freedom in binyan selection, e.g., the corresponding inchoative of a causative in binyan II can be in I, V, IX, etc.;
• specialized meanings that are not available in the other alternant.
Irregularities of this sort are not found in passives and reflexives, which, I argue, are cases of verb derivation. In fact, passives and reflexives never stand alone, without a transitive counterpart. They always have the same vowel sequences as the active and non-‐reflexive verbs they alternate with, and there are strict correspondences among binyanim, to the extent that, for instance, an active in binyan II will almost always have its passive in V. In addition, passives and reflexives are always morphologically more marked than their transitive counterparts. Lastly, on the semantic side, it is very un-‐
common that passives and reflexives acquire idiosyncratic interpretations that are un-‐
available in their corresponding actives and non-‐reflexives.
This analysis that causatives and inchoatives are derived from a common base is incidentally the same solution proposed in other works. This common base in a lexical-‐
ist approach, such as Davis & Demirdache (2000), is an underlying causative event from
ist approach, such as Davis & Demirdache (2000), is an underlying causative event from