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Part of
Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography: A crosslinguistic perspective
Edited by Fuzhen Si and Luigi Rizzi
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 267] 2021
► pp. 139–160

Chapter 7
Causativity alternation in the lower field

| University Moulay Ismail Meknes

We will argue in this paper that the lower field of the sentence, little vP, is endowed with a new functional category cause phrase (causP). We will severet anticausativity from voice. We will propose that anticausative morphology in standard Arabic (SA) is projected in syntax closer to the root, between the root and v°. Our proposition has two important consequences. The first one, it denies the existence of the strict locality between a root and its categorizer. The second one, it confirms that agentive and causer subjects will occupy different hierarchical positions inside of the sentence (IP). We will see that transcategorial derivations of derived nominals from the verb conserves anticausative morphology, but it cannot do so with passive morphology. This is a strong fact confirming the different syntactic status of the two kinds of morphology. Moreover, the distribution of agentive and causer subjects with subject oriented adverbs (SOA) and manner adverbs (MA) shows an asymmetry between the two in linking SOA and MA. We will explain this asymmetry between agent and causer subjects by their different syntactic positions into the structure of IP. Thereafter, we will extend our analysis to nominal events too.

Keywords: causativity, lower field, anticausativity, Standard Arabic, agent subject, causer subject, subject oriented adverbs (SOA), manner adverbs (MA)
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The morpho-syntactic nature of non-active morphology
    • 2.1The multiples ways of anticausatives realization in SA
    • 2.2Non-active morphology in SA
      • 2.2.1On the difference between voice and anticausative morphology
      • 2.2.2The homonymy of voice morphology
  • 3.Anticausative morphology is not a part of the root
    • 3.1Locality between roots and little v
  • 4.Anticausative morphology and transcategorial derivation
  • 5.Adverb distribution within anticausatives
    • 5.1Repetitive and restitutive adverbs
    • 5.2PP instruments and goals
  • 6.Causativity and agentivity in event nominals
    • 6.1Adverbs distribution in nominal domains
    • 6.2Agentivity in event nominals
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.267.07naj
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