[Lingtyp] Agentive vs. unagentive causees?

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Dear Seppo – Could I ask for a clarification? I can’t imagine what it would mean for a causee to act accidentally. If that’s indeed what you meant, could you give an example? I can only think of the causer’s action as intentional vs. accidental. OTOH there is of course an important difference in many languages between causees that have some amount of control over the induced action/activity and causees whose response to the cause(r) is entirely involuntary. The former would include causation by communication, persuasion, etc. But I guess that’s not what you had in mind? – Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Kittilä, Seppo via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 10:52
To: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Agentive vs. unagentive causees?
Dear all,

Does anyone here happen to know whether there are languages that would code what I have labelled here as agentive and unagentive causees differently. I refer here to cases like 'John made me build a house' (agentive causee) and 'great, now you made me break this' (unagentive causee). In both cases, the causee is responsible for what happens, but there are clear differences in whether the causee acts volitionally, purposefully and is in control. There are many languages where the agentivity/volitionality of the causer is formally manifest in cases like 'I broke something on purpose/accidentally' (for example the case marking of the Causer varies accordingly, see, e.g., Fauconnier 2012), but are there similar cases for Causees. And I am not looking for cases where the degree of volitionality of the Causee is different as in 'I made/let him do something', but cases where the coding of a Causee that accidentally causes something to happen is different from a Causee whose action is volitional and controlled.

All the best,
Seppo
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