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https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/93830
Title: | Coding causal-noncausal verb alternations : a form-frequency correspondence explanation |
Authors: | Haspelmath, Martin Calude, Andreea Spagnol, Michael Narrog, Heiko Bamyacı, Elif |
Keywords: | Maltese language -- Verb Linguistics -- Malta Maltese language -- Variation Maltese language -- Grammar |
Issue Date: | 2014 |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Citation: | Haspelmath, M., Calude, A., Spagnol, M., Narrog, H., & Bamyaci, E. (2014). Coding causal-noncausal verb alternations: a form-frequency correspondence explanation. Journal of Linguistics, 50(3), 587-625 |
Abstract: | We propose, and provide corpus-based support for, a usage-based explanation for crosslinguistic trends in the coding of causal-noncausal verb pairs, such as raise/rise, break (tr.)/break (intr.). While English mostly uses the same verb form both for the causal and the noncausal sense (labile coding), most languages have extra coding for the causal verb (icausative coding) and/or for the noncausal verb (anticausative coding). Causative and anticausative coding is not randomly distributed (Haspelmath 1993): Some verb meanings such as ‘freeze’, ‘dry’ and ‘melt’ tend to be coded as causatives, while others such as ‘break’, ‘open’ and ‘split’ tend to be coded as anticausatives. We propose an explanation of these coding tendencies on the basis of the form-frequency correspondence principle, which is a general efficiency principle that is responsible for many grammatical asymmetries, ultimately grounded in predictability of frequently expressed meanings. In corpus data from seven languages, we find that verb pairs for which the noncausal member is more frequent tend to be coded as anticausatives, while verb pairs for which the causal member is more frequent tend to be coded as causatives. Our approach implies that linguists should not rely on form-meaning parallelism when trying to explain crosslinguistic or language-particular patterns in this domain. |
URI: | https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/93830 |
ISSN: | 00222267 |
Appears in Collections: | Scholarly Works - FacArtMal |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Coding_causal_noncausal_verb_alternations.pdf | 2.02 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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