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<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><b>Crackers<br>
<br>
<br>
</b>Consider the following relationship between a state, a change of
state, and the causation of a change of state.<br>
<br>
STATE<br>
X was in a state of not being whole, being partially fractured though
without the parts completely separate or without the whole completely
destroyed<br>
(where X is something, preferably an artefact, of brittle consistency,
hard but breakable, such as vases or window panes made of glass,
plates made of porcelain, earthenware, urns or tablets made of clay,
walls made from dried cow-dung, etc.)<br>
<br>
CHANGE OF STATE<br>
X spontaneously, or at any rate without an animate agent acknowledged
as causally involved, changed from a state of being whole to a state
of not being whole, being partially fractured though without the parts
completely separate or without the whole completely destroyed<br>
<br>
CAUSATION<br>
An animate agent caused a change of state of A from being whole to not
being whole, being partially fractured though without the parts
completely separate or without the whole completely destroyed<br>
<br>
<br>
To exemplify this trias from English.<br>
<br>
STATE</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>The vase had a
crack.</i><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>(transitive verb of possession,</font></div>
<div><font face="Times"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>with
[deverbal???] noun as object) </font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>The vase was
cracked.</i><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>(existential copula,</font></div>
<div><font face="Times"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>stative-resultative participle of [intransitive, denominal???]
verb)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br>
CHANGE OF STATE</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>The vase
cracked.</i><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>(same verb as for causation, used intransitively)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br>
CAUSATION</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>Father cracked the
vase.</i><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>(same verb as for change of state, used
transitively)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br>
<br>
<br>
And here's closely related German.<br>
<br>
STATE</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>Die Vase hatte einen
Sprung.</i><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>(transitive verb of possession,</font></div>
<div><font face="Times"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>with
deverbal noun as object)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>Die Vase war
gesprungen.</i><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>(existential copula,</font></div>
<div><font face="Times"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>stative-resultative participle of [intransitive] verb)<br>
<br>
CHANGE OF STATE</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>Die Vase
sprang.</i><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>(intransitive verb, a verb of movement,</font></div>
<div><font face="Times"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>literally designating a sudden spring from the
ground)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>Die Vase bekam einen
Sprung.</i><x-tab> </x-tab>(inchoative verb, lit.
'to get',</font></div>
<div><font face="Times"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>with
deverbal noun as object)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br>
CAUSATION<br>
---<x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><br>
<br>
Remarkably, though a native speaker, I find no way of expressing this
straightforward state of affairs in German, other than in extremely
roundabout ways ('Father was careless and did something to the vase
that resulted in its having a crack', or such). Neither the
denominal noun<i> Sprung</i> nor some morphological or syntactic way
of causativising the verb<i> springen</i> works (there is an old
causative,<i> sprengen</i>, but that now means 'cause to burst with
a loud nose, explode'):</font><br>
<font face="Times" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>*Vater brachte der Vase
einen Sprung bei.</i></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><i>*Vater sprang die Vase.
*Vater ließ die Vase springen.</i></font><br>
<font face="Times" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">The prefixal derivative<i>
zer-springen</i> (with<i> zer-</i> a completive-destructive prefix)
again is only intransitive and means 'to go to pieces'; and
transitive<i> zer-sprengen</i> likewise means 'break up
completely'.<br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">At long last my question:<br>
<br>
Is this gap in German unique? Preliminary enquiries -- though of
very limited crosslinguistic range -- suggest it is not. Is it
easy or difficult or impossible to express the concept 'to cause
something to be cracked' in the language(s) that you speak or know
well?</font><br>
<font face="Times" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">I find this gap somewhat
worrying, from a practical as well as a theoretical point of view.
I'd assume that brittle things frequently end up being cracked, in
German-speaking lands no less than in English-speaking ones, and that
spontaneous crackings (ice comes to mind here, as temperature rises)
worldwide are overall far less frequent than cracks caused by the
carelessness of human agents. (If there is a difficulty with
'to cause something to be cracked', it might therefore be to do with
the semantics of transitivity rather than with frequency, a notion
often invoked to account for the differential ease of expressibility
of anything thinkable and sayable and in particular for the
directionality of derivations of causatives or
decausatives.)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br>
I'd appreciate any feedback.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">(And I'd like to gratefully
acknowledge the unwitting input from Alex Tantos, discussing
English<i> crack</i> at his thesis defence yesterday, if from the
angle of Discourse Representation Theory and how it accounts for
causation -- a really hard nut to crack.)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times"
color="#000000">frans.plank@uni-konstanz.de</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"> </font></div>
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