Парные глаголы с каузативным значением: семантические особенности (на материале бурятского языка)

Introduction. The article discusses the semantics of paired causative verbs in the Buryat language, which has not been the subject of a special study yet. The aim was to study the semantic features of Buryat paired causative verbs by way of identifying: 1) the types of paired causative verbs, 2) the contribution of each semantic component of a verbt of its general semantics and their correlation, and 3) paired causative verbs as a special case in expressing causative semantics. Materials and methods. The data was collected from works of fiction in the Electronic Corpus of the Buryat language; contextual and distributive analysis were used as the primary methods of research. Results. Semantic analysis of paired causative verbs, illustrative of causative relationships in the linguistic picture of the Buryat world, indicated that in pairs of non-causative + causative verb the latter is a leading component, which demonstrates the power of causative semantics; the verbs of this type most often express various emotions associated with impact and subjective assessment. The other type are represented by pairs of synonymous causative verb + causative verb that are effective in expressing the intensity of the impact; with the semes of the synonymous verbs combined, the meaning of causation in such pairs is enhanced, and their expressiveness and emotionale valuation aspects come to the fore.

Children develop causatives despite pervasive ellipsis: Evidence from Turkish

Children use causative verbs in language to express causality. The learning of causatives relies on cues in children's interaction with caregivers. Argument structure has been widely posited as a facilitative cue for learning causatives. However, it may lack reliability due to ellipsis allowed in many languages, thus affecting children's acquisition of causatives. In this study, we investigate the role of object ellipsis in the learning of two prevalent types of causatives, namely lexical and morphological causatives. We take Turkish as a test case, which employs both types of causatives. The results show that the ellipsis in child-directed speech is pervasive in both causatives, with morphological causatives exhibiting a substantially lower proportion of ellipsis. However, by examining children's developmental trajectory, we show that lexical causatives develop with a pattern strikingly similar to the general development of verbs, whereas morphological causatives develop more slowly, despite less object ellipsis and explicit morphological marking. The findings suggest that argument structure may not play a major role in the learning of causatives. Our general conclusion is that children acquire causatives despite the challenge posed by pervasive ellipsis.

The Morpho-Phonology-Semantics Interface in Modern Standard Arabic

The issue of the interface between linguistic components has got much interest in contemporary linguistics especially after the advancements that took place in the discipline of Conceptual Semantics. In essence, linguistics components have all been considered to be equal in terms of deriving meaning. In this article, the researcher scrutinized how the component of morpho-phonology interfaces with semantics. This aim was achieved through the analysis of intransitive verbs in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA, henceforth). It was found that intransitive verbs serve well in terms of demonstrating the interface between morpho-phonology and semantics. The morphological and phonological alternations of intransitive verbs result in changes in meaning. Cognition has a central role in generating causative verbs from intransitive ones.

ЕТЮДИ ЗА ЕЗИКОВИТЕ ИЗМЕНЕНИЯ / STUDIES ON LANGUAGE CHANGE

Language changes, their types, causes, emergence and demise as well as their spread in the variants of the different languages make up a very intricate complex of problems. Only some of them will be touched upon here: the appearance of innovations motivated by various pragmatic factors within specific social groups: the in-creased use of diminutives from abstract nouns in the internet speech of younger generations, the use of forms of address such as brat mi (брат ми), mayka mi (майка ми) in oral speech, the substitution of the vocative forms of nouns with non-vocative forms under foreign influence, the formation of causative verbs through dereflexivization, e.g. usmihvam se (усмихвам се) – usmihvam (усмихвам). The main reasons for failed or incomplete grammaticalizations are also discussed. Keywords: grammaticalization, successful/unsuccessful grammaticalization, W. Croft, interaction of linguistic, social and pragmatic factors in grammaticalization, Bulgarian language

Causation in Classical Chinese During the Warring States Period and in the Han Dynasty

In this paper, I explore causation in Classical Chinese during the Warring States period and in the Han Dynasty. Whether causation is realised via causative use of words with covert causative verbs, or via overt causative verbs, causation structures can always be divided into Agentive and Causative constructions, which can be further categorised into lexical causatives and productive causatives. I also account for causation in Classical Chinese by means of Feng’s (1998, 2000, 2009) prosodic approach and show that both strategies to form causation structures are compatible with a prosodic theory. I discuss both VO and VV causation and state that Agentive and Causative constructions involving covert causative (light) verbs are prosodic words, whereas those involving overt causative verbs exhibit properties of phrases.

Curatives in the Old-Lithuanian Bible translations

The subject of the paper is curatives, a special type of causative verbs in Lithuanian, in the Bible translations by Johannes Bretke (1579–1590), Samuel Boguslaw Chylinski (1660), Samuel Bythner (1701), Philipp Ruhig (1727) and Juozapas Arnulfas Giedraitis (1816). Curatives are a special type of causation implementing the causee-suppressing valency (CSP) pattern. In the analyzed texts, one can notice several morphological, semantic or syntactic features coinciding with contemporary curative constructions. However, in addition to the morphology and semantics of curatives, the article discusses also some rare and interesting cases that can be interpreted as expressing the causee and includes remarks on the lexicalization processes.

On comparative Proto-Mǐn *Dʰ- and putting conjectural morphology in its place

Recent conjectural morphological (‘word family’) approaches to early Chinese assign the aspirated causative verbs of the Mǐn group to Jerry Norman’s comparatively reconstructed Proto-Mǐn voiced aspirated *Dʰ-, proposing on this basis that *Dʰ- reflects prefixation of Old Chinese provenance. In this article, I argue that comparative phonological work on Mǐn has never suggested *Dʰ- for these items. In this case as elsewhere, morphological models can be of use but require grounding in comparative results.

Non-Specialized Means of Causative Semantics Expression in the Slavic and Germanic Languages (Based on the Lexical Semantic Group of Defense and Protection)

The paper deals with the peculiarities of verbs that convey causative semantics without being specialized for it. The objective of the research is to identify the specific features of Slavic (Russian, Belarusian) and Germanic (English, German) defense and protection verbs with regard to causativity. The study of lexical semantic groups in the aspect of causativity is topical, because it contributes to the specification of causativity as a category. It works towards resolving a controversial causativity theory issue about the scope and boundaries of causative verbs class, as well as helps to reveal some internal laws of the causative category development (gradual nature of the causative category). The following methods were used: contextual, transformational, comparative methods; dictionary definitions analysis, component and distributive analysis. It was found that defense and protection verbs in three (Russian, Belarusian, German) of the four studied languages have units that do not contain a causative component. Within the analyzed lexical semantic group, there are verbs with a high and low degree of causativity (vertical changes of causativity degree). In these two groups, it is possible to identify the units that are able and unable to change the causativity degree in a context (horizontal changes of causativity degree). The gradual character of causativity is an integral feature of the studied Slavic and Germanic verbs. The degree of causativity is their differential trait.