The causative continuum
The causative continuum
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因果连续体
DOI:
10.1075/tsl.48.07shi
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发表时间:
2002
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
Prashant Pardeshi
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
M. Shibatani;Prashant Pardeshi
This paper has a five-fold goal of (1) clarifying the direct/indirect distinction in causation in relation to verbal semantics,(2) demonstrating the importance of verbal semantics in causative derivation,(3) providing more compelling evidence for a continuum along both formal and semantic dimensions in causative formation,(4) arguing for the productivity parameter as a predictor of the formfunction correlation, and (5) establishing the importance of an intermediate category of ‘sociative causation’. The oft-invoked notions of direct and indirect causation as well as similar ones of manipulative/directive and contact/distant refer to a fundamental distinction in the cognition of causation. These terms have been rather vaguely and loosely used, however, and need to be either redefined or clarified in relation to the verbal semantics relevant to other issues in the grammar of causation. The verbal semantics of both root verbs and causative verbs interact in a way that calls for a finer-grained semantics going well beyond the traditional transitive/intransitive distinction as well as the more recently recognized unaccusative/unergative distinction.In a typological study it is customary to classify causative forms into (a) the lexical (synthetic),(b) the morphological, and (c) the syntactic (analytic or periphrastic) type. We find a formal typology of this kind to be limited in a number of respects. For one thing, as noted by Givón (1980) and Comrie (1981, 1985), these three types form a continuum, and each type, furthermore, consists of a continuum of its own, rendering the entire formal dimension into a single continuum. More significantly, functional-typology demands articulation of the formal and the semantic dimension of a given cognitive domain, so that the relevant formmeaning correlation is captured in a systematic manner. As it turns out, there is a great deal of functional overlap among formally distinct types of causative, which