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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Thanks, Christian! I was struck by the absence of syntactic causative constructions in some languages. Until I came across the first such example (Japanese, decades ago), I had naively assumed that all languages
have such constructions (even if their particular realization varies of course, manifesting for example as serial verb constructions in individual languages). Then, in the context of the now formally defunct project
<a href="https://causalityacrosslanguages.wordpress.com/">Causality Across Languages</a>, I came across additional examples, all of which happen to share with the Japanese case the property of the presence of a “fully productive” (again, in the very specific
sense in which I’ve been using that term) morphological causative. So the obvious hypothetical generalization here is that all languages that lack syntactic causatives have fully productive morphological ones. I then turned this generalization around into
the stronger, less likely, and thus arguably (even) more interesting version I asked about.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">I haven’t thought about this generalization in terms of grammaticalization, at least not in your sense (i.e., grammaticalization as a source-oriented process). I was thinking about it in pragmatic, “ecological”
terms (which include grammaticalization from a target-oriented perspective). We have here two tools that can potentially do the same job, so if one of them is more efficient than the other, those among us who are inclined to think that efficiency may have
a hand (pun intended) in language change might hypothesize that the presence of the more efficient tool in a language might preempt the grammaticalization of the less efficient one, whereas the presence of the less efficient tool would not preempt the grammaticalization
of the more efficient one. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">The $64k question then becomes whether fully productive morphological causatives are actually more efficient than syntactic causatives. I’m pretty sure there is currently no psycholinguistic evidence either
way. What’s more, I’m actually myself not super-optimistic about a frequency/efficiency-based account, given the very low frequency of syntactic causatives in the narratives my collaborators and I collected in the CAL sample languages (cf. also Haspelmath
2008 and Natalya Levshina’s work). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Best – Juergen<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Haspelmath, M. (2008). Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries. <i>Cognitive Linguistics
</i>19(1): 1-33.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Levshina, N. (2015). European analytic causatives as a comparative concept: Evidence from a parallel corpus of film subtitles. <i>Folia Linguistica</i> 49(2): 487–520.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Levshina, N. (2016). Why we need a token-based typology: A case study of analytic and lexical causatives in fifteen European languages. <i>Folia Linguistica</i> 50(2): 507–542.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Levshina, N. (2017). Measuring iconicity: A quantitative study of lexical and analytic causatives in British English. <i>Functions of Language</i> 24(3): 319–347.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Levshina, N. (2022). Semantic maps of causation: New hybrid approaches based on corpora and grammar descriptions.
<i>Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft</i> 41(1): 179-205.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann@uni-erfurt.de><br>
<b>Date: </b>Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 2:43 PM<br>
<b>To: </b>lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] A generalization about morphological and syntactic causatives<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Dear Jürgen,<br>
<br>
as you do not reveal what makes you entertain this hypothesis, I can only speculate. Are you thinking of its diachronic side? Synthetic causative construction originate in analytic causative constructions by grammaticalization. As has been known since the beginnings
of research in grammaticalization, the genesis of a target construction by grammaticalization does not automatically and instantly lead to the disappearance of its source.<br>
<br>
Second, as has also been well known, the less grammaticalized a causative construction is, the more it covers of the spectrum that you call 'fully productive'. In the grammaticalization scenario, the source construction may therefore be fully productive while
the target construction is less so. One may therefore believe that the source becomes superfluous and disappears once the target construction has become fully productive.<br>
<br>
To the extent that the above is reasonable, your hypothesis could then be true for such syntactic paradigms of causative constructions which are in a grammaticalization relationship. In other words, it could be possible that the counterexamples which you have
received in the answers to your question concern such syntactic paradigms which are
<u>not</u> in a grammaticalization relationship.<br>
<br>
But again, this may or may not be the direction of your hypothesis.<br>
<br>
Best, Christian<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">-- <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann<br>
Rudolfstr. 4<br>
99092 Erfurt<br>
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Deutschland</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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