Cover not available
Article published In:
Language and Linguistics
Vol. 25:1 (2024) ► pp.123–161

Causative alternation in Zuo Tradition

| Shaanxi Normal University

This study examines the different variants of causative alternation in Zuo Tradition (左傳), an archaic Chinese narrative history from the Pre-Qin period. It is found that denominal verbs, unergative verbs, and “pure” unaccusative verbs participate actively in the alternation, and that the causative variant bears a complex relation with the agentive and putative variants; this causes problems for previous analyses. This paper proposes a two-step build-up of eventuality for causative alternation in archaic Chinese. Specifically, I propose that verbs in archaic Chinese are monadic and select only one argument. The merger of the verb with this argument is the realization of its eventuality conceptualized in the Lexicon; any further merger is determined by the eventuality composed by different light verbs in syntax. The uninitiated light verb is a placeholder with an empty argument. A specific light verb value is determined by the eventuality that is sent to the syntactic structure. Thus, the difference between all variants in causative alternation witnessed in Zuo Tradition lies in the different eventualities which they introduce into the syntactic configuration.

Keywords: causative alternation, archaic Chinese, Theta System, light verb, eventuality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction of related issues in causative alternation
  • 2.An overview of causative alternation in Zuo Tradition
  • 3.Challenges to the current analyses
    • 3.1The behavior of denominal verbs
    • 3.2The interaction between causative alternators and non-alternators
    • 3.3Interaction of causative with agentive and putative variants
  • 4.A proposal to causative alternation in Zuo Tradition
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 2 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00151.wuy
References
Ackema, Peter & Marelj, Marijana
2012 To have the empty Theta-role. In Everaert, Martin & Marelj, Marijana & Siloni, Tal (eds.), The Theta system: Argument structure at the interface, 227–250. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bhatt, Rajesh
2003 Causativization in Hindi. Amherst: University of Massachusetts. (Unpublished class handout, March 2003.)Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit
2005 Structuring sense, volume 2: The normal course of events. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butt, Miriam
2003 The morpheme that wouldn’t go away. Manchester: University of Manchester. (Unpublished seminar handout.)Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro
2004 A semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences. In Alexiadou, Artemis & Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Everaert, Martin (eds.), The unaccusativity puzzle: Explorations of the syntax-lexicon interface, 22–59. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam
1995 The minimalist program. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
1999 Derivation by phase (MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18). Cambridge: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.Google Scholar
Chou, Fa-kao
1962 A historical grammar of Ancient Chinese, part II: Morphology. Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Chou, Tsu-mo
1966 Wen xue ji. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company.Google Scholar
Dai, Qingxia
2001 The historical development of the causative category in Tibeto-Burmese languages. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 29(1). 1–10.Google Scholar
Downer, G. B.
1959 Derivation by tone-change in Classical Chinese. Bulletin of the School of African and Oriental Studies 22(1/3). 258–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durrant, Stephen & Li, Wai-yee & Schaberg, David
(trans.) 2016 Zuo Tradition/Zuozhuan: Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals”. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Folli, Raffaella & Harley, Heidi
2005 Flavors of v: Consuming results in Italian and English. In Kempchinsky, Paula & Slabakova, Roumyana (eds.), Aspectual inquiries, 95–120. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Causation, obligation, and argument structure: On the nature of little v . Linguistic Inquiry 38(2). 197–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gates, Jesse P. & Honkasalo, Sami & Lai, Yunfan
2022 From transitive to intransitive and voiceless to voiced in Proto-Sino-Tibetan: New evidence from Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs. Language and Linguistics 23(2). 212–239. [URL]Google Scholar
Grohmann, Kleanthes K.
2003 Prolific domains: On the anti-locality of movement dependencies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hale, Kenneth L. & Keyser, Samuel Jay
1991 On the syntax of argument structure (Lexicon Project Working Papers 34). Cambridge: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT.Google Scholar
1993 On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In Hale, Kenneth & Keyser, Samuel Jay (eds.), The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 53–109. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi Britton
1995 Subjects, events, and licensing. Cambridge: MIT. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Jackendoff, Ray
1972 Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto
1965 A modern English grammar on historical principles. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Jin, Lixin
2005a The perfect aspect suffix *-s in Chinese and Tibetan. Minzu Yuwen 2005(2). 1–6.Google Scholar
2005b Shanggu Hanyu shengmu qingzhuo jiaoti he dongci de ti. Yuwen Yanjiu 2005(4). 29–33.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika
1996 Severing the external argument from its verb. In Rooryck, Johan & Zaring, Laurie (eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109–137. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Larson, Richard K.
1988 On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19(3). 335–391.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth & Rappaport Hovav, Malka
1995 Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
2005 Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lin, T.-H. Jonah
2001 Light verb syntax and the theory of phrase structure. Irvine: University of California. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Marantz, Alec
1984 On the nature of grammatical relations. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
1995 Cat as a phrasal idiom: Consequences of late insertion in distributed morphology. Cambridge: MIT. (Manuscript.)Google Scholar
Marelj, Marijana
2004 Middles and argument structure across languages. Utrecht: Utrecht University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Matisoff, James A.
2003 Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and philosophy of Sino-Tibetan reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
McKoon, Gail & Macfarland, Talke
2000 Externally and internally caused change of state verbs. Language 76(4). 833–858. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mei, Tsu-Lin
1988 Three examples of internal reconstruction in Chinese. Zhongguo Yuwen 1988(3). 169–181.Google Scholar
2008 Consonant combinations in oracle bone inscriptions. Zhongguo Yuwen 2008(3). 195–207.Google Scholar
2012 The causative *s- and nominalizing *-s in Old Chinese and related matters in Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Language and Linguistics 13(1). 1–28.Google Scholar
2013 The *-s suffix in Sino-Tibetan and its reflex in Old Chinese: Derivation by tone change revisited. In Editorial Committee of Lishi Yuyanxue Yanjiu (ed.), Lishi Yuyanxue Yanjiu, vol.61, 1–10. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Miyagawa, Shigeru
2001 Causatives. In Tsujimura, Natsuko (ed.), The handbook of Japanese linguistics, 236–268. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David M.
1978 Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. In Jaeger, Jeri J. & Woodbury, Anthony C. & Ackerman, Farrell & Chiarello, Christine & Gensler, Orin & Kingston, John & Sweetser, Eve & Thompson, Henry & Whistler, Kenneth (eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 157–190. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pesetsky, David
1995 Zero syntax. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pulleyblank, Edwin G.
1973 Some further evidence regarding Old Chinese *-s and its time of disappearance. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) 36(2). 368–373. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ramchand, Gillian Catriona
2008 Verb meaning and the lexicon: A first-phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rappaport Hovav, Malka, & Levin, Beth
2012 Lexicon uniformity and the causative alternation. In Everaert, Martin & Marelj, Marijana & Siloni, Tal (eds.), The Theta system: Argument structure at the interface, 150–176. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya
2002 The Theta system: An overview. Theoretical Linguistics 28(3). 229–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Concepts, syntax, and their interface: The Theta system. Cambridge: The MIT Press. (Edited by Everaert, Martin & Marelj, Marijana & Reuland, Eric.) DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya & Siloni, Tal
2005 The lexicon-syntax parameter: Reflexivization and other arity operations. Linguistic Inquiry 36(3). 389–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sagart, Laurent
1999 The roots of Old Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sagart, Laurent & Baxter, William
2012 Reconstructing the* s-prefix in Old Chinese. Language and Linguistics 13(1). 29–59.Google Scholar
Saksena, Anuradha
1982 Topics in the analysis of causatives: With an account of Hindi paradigms. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sun, Yuwen
2015 Hanyu biandiao gouci kaobian. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Li
1980 Hanyu shigao. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company.Google Scholar
1982 Tongyuan zidian. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Wang, William S.-Y.
2016 Chinese Linguistics. In Chan, Sin-wai (ed.), The Routledge encyclopedia of the Chinese language, 152–183. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wright, Saundra K.
2002 Transitivity and change of state verbs. In Larson, Julie & Paster, Mary (eds.), BLS 28: General session and parasession on field linguistics, 339–350. Washington, D.C.: Linguistic Society of America. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wuyun, Saina
Forthcoming. A distributed morphology account of tonal change in Middle Chinese. (Manuscript.)
Zhengzhang, Shangfang
2019 Shanggu yinxi. 2nd edn. Shanghai: Shanghai Educational Publishing House.Google Scholar