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M-E L L T (2015) | 89
Inchoative-causative alternation
in Persian
M S-D⋆
⋆Dept. of Linguistics,
École Normale Supérieure,
75230 Paris, France
maxime.seveleu@ens.fr
A The present study mainly aims to describe the mechanics of
causative-inchoative alternation in modern Persian as well as the causative struc-
ture of its verbal system. In this scope, we provide a brief description of the
phrase structure of the modern Persian and discuss its main causative-inchoative
codification strategies: morphological, lexical and analytic causatives. When giv-
ing Persian examples, we use the Transcription procedure for Iranian toponymic See UNGEGN (2013).
items implemented by the Iranian National Committee on the Standardization
of Geographic names and subsequently adopted and approved by the United Na- See UN (2012).
tions in 2012.
I T change of state, causative, transitive, inchoative, Persian
Introduction
C Cross-linguistically, a causative is a verb form
that indicates that a subject causes another agent to do or to be something, or
causes a change of state (COS) event that is non-volitional. Certain verbs that
express such a change of state are used transitively or intransitively. When used
transitively, such verbs are said to be causative, while when used intransitively,
thay are referred to as inchoative or anticausative. This phenomenon of double-
facedness is then called “causative-inchoative alternation”.
The first thorough analysis of the causative-inchoative alternation and that
of the behaviour of the COS verbs is attributed to Jespersen (1927). In a chapter Jespersen, O. (1927). A Modern English
Grammar: On Historical Principles (Part III
Syntax. Second Volume). Copenhagen: Hei-
delberg.
discussing transitivity, he asserts that many verbs participate in both intransitive
and transitive constructions making it impossible to sharply divide English verbs
into two categories.
© M.Seveleu-Dubrovnik; Editorial committee of the MELaLT,editors G.Lang, B.Simons, 2015.
90 | I— P, M. S-D
Many linguists (Lakoff 1965; Hall 1965; Halliday 1967; Anderson 1968;
Chomsky 1970; Fillmore 1970) followed Jespersen studying transitive and in-
transitive constructions with COS verbs, but it was Smith (1970) who proposedSmith, C. S. (1970). Jespersen’s ’move and
change’ class and causative verbs in English.
In M. J. al., Linguistic and Literary Studies in
Honor of Archibald A. Hill : Descriptive Lin-
guistics (Vol. 2, pp. 101-109). Mouton.
to account for their syntactic properties using the semantic features of “external
control” and “independent activity”. He argued that while intransitive verbs de-
note activities that happen independently and refuse an external agent, transitive
verbs need external agents controlling the activity and cannot denote an event
happening independently.
Intransitive verbs
Unaccusatives
Subject=Theme/Patient
Unergatives
Subject=Agent/Initiator
Alternating unaccusatives
Pure unaccusatives
Causatives
Anticausatives
Causative alternation
I P Ways to to express causation differ across lan-
guages spanning from morphological ones to periphrasis and lexical causatives.
Persian, for instance, may recur to the inflectional pattern:
xordan ‘to eat’ → xor¯
andan ‘to feed’
←
while conserving the general lexical mechanism:
oft¯
adan ‘to fall’ → and¯
axtan ‘to make fall, to cast’.
←
One defines an inchoative/causative verb pair semantically: they express
the same COS situation and only present differences in the layout of the par-
ticipants: causative verb’s agent participants cause the situation, while inchoat-
ive verbs exclude those so as to present the situation as occurring spontaneously
(Haspelmath, 1993, p. 90).
Researchers (Shibatani, 2001) theoretize on possible causation encoding
schemes providing several criteria, such as: COS enforcement,assymetric tem-
poral relation or dependency presumption for a counterfactual inference (1976a,
pp. 1-2). On the other hand, many analysts like Comrie (1981), Dixon (2000)
and others documented the patterns that occur cross-linguistically. FollowingShibatani, M. (ed.) (2001). «The gram-
mar of causation and interpersonal manipu-
lation». Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Comrie’s program classifying causative constructions, we present a general clas-
sification of causative construction in modern Persian.
S This paper aims to describe the causative
structure in Persian as well as its causative-inchoative alternation. This will be
M-E L L T (2015) | 91
achieved by providing a brief description of the Persian phrase structure and by
explaining the behaviour of the language with respect to its causative-inchoative
alternations, further classifying causative constructions in modern Persian: mor-
phological, lexical and analytic causatives.
Formal types of alternation in Persian
B P Persian grammar follows standard nomina-
tive-accusative strategy of verbal actant marking and has an SOV type of align-
ment: only the object of a transitive sentence is marked and the verb tends
to agree with the subject through inflections in number and person (Mahootian
1997; Lambton 1967):
Ex. 1
To gold¯
an-r¯
a šekasti.
you vase broke 2
‘You broke the vase’
Huge proportion of Persian verbs are complex predicates formed by a light
verb (LV) and a preverbal element. The latter can be a noun, an adjective, an
adverb or a preposition phrase (Follia et al. 2005). In the causative alterna-
tion, the inchoative verb is basic and the causative verb is derived and marked
(Haspelmath, 1993). We will further describe three mechanisms the causative
construction uses: morphological, lexical and analytic. They follow the formal
causative-inchoative types proposed by Haspelmath (1993), the only alternation
type out of use being “anticausative”.
M The inchoative form is
basic and the causative form is derived. Persian achieves this by adding the infix
¯
an- to the inchoative form, i.e. to its present stem, engaging the verb in the ending
interchange -(i)dan/-¯
andan. Morphophonologically, such a form is indivisible:
←
←
←
←
←
←
←
Base (inchoative) Derived (causative)
jušidan ‘to boil’ → juš¯
andan ‘to boil’
xordan ‘to eat’ → xor¯
andan ‘to feed’
x¯
abidan ‘to sleep’ → x¯
ab¯
andan ‘put to sleep’
tarsidan ‘to scare’ → tars¯
andan ‘to scare (frighten)’
pusidan ‘to corrode’ → pus¯
andan ‘make rot’
xoškidan ‘to dry’ → xošk¯
andan ‘to sear’
xandidan ‘to laugh’ → xand¯
andan ‘make laugh’
© M.Seveleu-Dubrovnik; Editorial committee of the MELaLT,editors G.Lang, B.Simons, 2015.
92 | I— P, M. S-D
Ex. 2a, inchoative
Pesar tarsid.
boy scare P 3
‘The boy was frightened’
Ex. 2b, causative
Sag pesar-r¯
a tars¯
and.
dog boy A scare P 3
‘The dog scared the child’
L Another device is to only use lexical mechanisms
to produce the causative term. Inchoative/causative pairs exhibit morphology
attached to a common root. This root form is then garnished: either suppletively,
or by means of special operator verbs.
L 1: Equative causatives use
the same verb to denote both inchoative and causative meanings, thought this
format is relatively rare in Persian.
Inchoative Causative
šekastan ‘to break’ → šekastan ‘to break’
boridan ‘to cut’ → boridan ‘to cut’
poxtan ‘to cook’ → poxtan ‘to cook’
rixtan ‘to pour’ → rixtan ‘to pour’
Ex. 3a, inchoative
Šar¯
ab rixt.
wine spill P 3
‘Wine spilled’
Ex. 3b, causative
Zan šar¯
ab-r¯
a rixt.
woman wine A spill P 3
‘The woman spilled the wine’
M-E L L T (2015) | 93
L 2: - Thisalterna-
tions use different verb roots. Two verbal elements are thus lexically unrelated
and their complimentarity only manifests semantically.
←
←
←
Inchoative Causative
raftan ‘to go’ → bordan ‘to take’
¯
amadan ‘to come’ → ¯
avardan ‘to bring’
oft¯
adan ‘to fall’ → and¯
axtan ‘to drop’
Ex. 4a, causative
Sarat¯
an Hasan-r¯
a košt.
cancer Hasan A kill P 3
‘Cancer killed Hassan’
Ex. 4b, inchoative
Hasan mord.
Hasan die P 3
‘Hassan died’
L 3: This form is
the most productive and frequent alternating form in Persian. Typologically,
equipollent verbs derive both forms from the same stem but with different af-
fixes. In Persian, the role of affixes is played by the light verb operators applied to
a preverbal element forming structures according to the patterns N +L , A+ L,
A +L or P +L. General scheme uses the verbs ‘to do’ and š
‘to become’ to produce causative and inchoative forms respectively. Neverthe-
less, other pairs of light verbs are also used. Not pretending to be exhaustive, we
give several examples:
←
←.
←
←
←
⋆X ():
literally, ‘to eat’.
Causative L Inchoative L
‘to do’ → š ‘to become’
‘to hit’ → ‘to receive a hit’⋆
¯
‘to give’ → ¯
‘to get, to find’
‘to hit’ → ‘to take’
¯
‘to give’ → ‘to take’
© M.Seveleu-Dubrovnik; Editorial committee of the MELaLT,editors G.Lang, B.Simons, 2015.
94 | I— P, M. S-D
Pair relations between light verbs and their semantics is a rich topic and will
be addressed in a separate article. Examples of equipollent causative-inchoative
alternation pairs are given below:
←
←
←
←
←
←
←
←
Inchoative Causative
sav¯
ar š ‘to get on’ → sav¯
ar ‘to pick up’
garm š ‘to warm up’ → garm ‘to heat’
bid¯
ar š ‘to wake up’ → bid¯
ar ‘to awaken’
y¯
ad ‘to learn’ → y¯
ad ¯
‘to instruct’
didan ‘to see’ → neš¯
an ¯
‘to show’
¯
ataš ‘to catch fire’ → ¯
ataš ‘to set on fire’
zamin ‘to fall’ → zamin ‘to down on the ground’
gul ‘to be cheated’ → gul ‘to deceive’
Ex. 5a, causative
Hasan k¯
ar-r¯
a tam¯
am kard.
Hasan work A complete do P 3
‘Hassan finished the work’
Ex. 5b, inchoative
K¯
ar tam¯
am šod.
work complete become P 3
‘The work finished’
S Modern Persian can also use causative structures
different from those mentioned earlier. Some verbs can be causativised syntac-
tically. In this method, a complement clause is formed containing the verb to
be causativised and is preceded by the compound verb operator ¯
š ‘to
cause’. This transformation is a valency-increasing operation, it adds one argu-
ment to a verb. The originally intransitive verb produces a transitive causative
construction (‘to fall’ → ‘to make fall’, i.e. ‘to topple’), the originally transitive
verb produces a ditransitive causative construction (‘to eat’ → ‘to make eat
’, i.e. ‘to feed to ’). Another causativizing possibility is to use the
causative voice. Its action consists in promoting the oblique argument of a tran-
sitive verb to an agent argument. This transformation increases the valency of the
verb by one as well. Should there be two agent arguments after the procedure,
one of them shall become oblique.
M-E L L T (2015) | 95
Conclusion
Persian makes extensive use of causative-inchoative constructions and compound
verbs. This makes this area of linguistic research a vast domain in its own right.
This paper looks at the different recipes that Persian language uses to express al-
ternation between inchoative and causative verbs. We show a general classifica-
tion of causative constructions in modern Persian: morphological and syntactic.
We have not discussed the implications of causative-inchoative alternations in
Persian, especially the application of the causative Light Verb operator in inchoa-
tive forms, for the general argument structure of alternating and non-alternating
verbs. Some other questions will be considered in separate articles as well. For
example, the preceding analysis only concerns causative / inchoative alternation
that takes place in active clauses. The question of conjugated causativization and
passivization in Persian goes beyond the subject of this article. Different mor-
phological and syntactic strategies to causativize the passive construction will be
addressed in a separate article.
A I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Leili An-
var whose Persian courses at École Normale have been a source of plentiful sci-
entific discussions. The idea of this article originated from one of those. I am
grateful to the linguistic community of the Persian seminar « Pers’ENS ».
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