Edited by Lars Hellan, Andrej L. Malchukov and Michela Cennamo
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 237] 2017
► pp. 431–469
This paper deals with an interesting problem of circumfixed causatives in Polish, which do not behave with respect to anticausatives in the way causative structures function in other (European) languages. This subclass of causatives does not have corresponding synthetic (single-word) anticausatives, while other causatives in Polish possess such correspondents. We propose to explain this situation within the model of root based construction morphology, where causatives assume no derivational connection with other verbs: Nevertheless they arise from the substructures resulting in causative meaning , which are shared with anticausatives. The substructures, together with the delimited class of roots common to causatives and anticausatives, allow us to account for the similarities in the alternating part of the material. The adverse relationship that the circumfixed causatives have with the synthetic anticausatives will be accounted for with the use of the distinction into Active voice and Non-active voice verbal structures, which has been proposed within the root-based morpho-syntax by Alexiadou and Doron (2012).