A Typological Study of Causatives in Taiwan--zddnew英文清晰版.pdf

A Typological Study of Causatives in Taiwan Southern Min* CHINFA LIEN NATIONAL TSING HUA UNIVERSITY 0. INTRODUCTION. Typologically causatives are generally held to consist of three major types: (1) lexical causatives, (2) synthetic (or morphological) causatives and (3) analytic (or syntactic, 1 periphrastic) causatives. Lexical causatives involving the use of lexical elements to indicate causativity fall into two subtypes: (1a) labile causatives or covert causatives with zero derivation, and (1b) suppletive causatives where inchoative and causative meaning are realized as two lexical items with no derivational link. Synthetic causatives are formed by morphological processes such as affixation or phonological alternation. Analytic causatives are complex constructions that divide into two subtypes: (3a) specific causative verbs plus transitive or intransitive verbs and (3b) resultative constructions that encode a complex notion denoting an event and a resulting situation. In the majority of cases causativity is supposedly expressed by a single labile verb with zero modification or morphological alternation in the Old Chinese period whereas it is expressed periphrastically in modern Chinese. Needless to say, labile causatives have long been attritted leaving only a few stray forms in modern Taiwan Southern Min (TSM). Although the morphological way of expressing causativity is no longer productive in modern times, there are still some residues attesting to the existence of the former productive rules of morphological alternation. This paper is in part an attempt to look into these morphological alternations b