Anticausative verb

Examples

English

In English, many anticausatives are of the class of "alternating ambitransitive verbs", where the alternation between transitive and intransitive forms produces a change of the position of the patient role (the transitive form has a patientive direct object, and this becomes the patientive subject in the intransitive). This phenomenon is called causative alternation. For example:

• He broke the window. → The window broke.
• Some pirates sank the ship. → The ship sank.

Passive voice is not an anticausative construction. In passive voice, the agent of causation is demoted from its position as a core argument (the subject), but it can optionally be re-introduced using an adjunct (in English, commonly, a by-phrase). In the examples above, The window was broken, The ship was sunk would clearly indicate causation, though without making it explicit.

Romance languages

In the Romance languages, many anticausative verbs are formed through a pseudo-reflexive construction, using a clitic pronoun (which is identical to the non-emphatic reflexive pronoun) applied on a transitive verb. For example (in Spanish, using the clitic se):

• El vidrio se quebró. (Infinitive: quebrar + se)
• Se está hundiendo el barco. or El barco se está hundiendo. or El barco está hundiéndose. (Verbal periphrasis or compound verb: estar hundiendo + se in different positions, from the Infinitive: hundirse)

Another example in French:

• Les poissons se pêchaient et se vendaient.

Slavic languages

In the Slavic languages, the use is essentially the same as in the Romance languages. For example (in Serbo-Croatian, using se):

• Staklo se razbilo.

In East Slavic languages (such as Russian), the pronoun ru becomes postfix ru (or ru after a vowel in Russian).

• Стекло разбилось. ru
• Речка разливается. ru

The suffix ru has a large number of uses and does not necessarily denote anticausativity (or even intransitivity). However, in most cases it denotes either passive voice or one of the subclasses of reflexivity (anticausativity, reciprocity, etc.)

There is a class of verbs (deponent verbs, отложительные глаголы ru which only exist in this reflexive form (the suffix ru can't be removed). These are commonly anticausative or autocausative, and commonly refer to emotions, behavior, or factors outside one's control.

• Иван надеется поступить в университет. ru
• Остановка автобуса оказалась рядом с нашей гостиницей. ru

In addition, a verb may be put into an unaccusative/anticausative form by forming an impersonal sentence, with the verb typically either in its past tense neuter form, or in its present tense third person form:

• Штирлица тянуло на родину. ru Literally,
• Из окна дуло. ru Literally, Note that the verb has neither agent nor patient, and therefore has valency zero: it is in the impersonal passive voice.

Here as well there is a class of "impersonal verbs", which only exist in this impersonal form:

• Ивана тошнит. ru Literally, The verb тошнить ru has no standard personal form. Instead of *Эта рыба меня тошнит ru, to say , one must say От этой рыбы меня тошнит ru , where is not but something that remains unspecified. (The personal form has, however, entered Russian vernacular, in the meaning .)
• Мне везёт в картах. ru Literally,

Arabic

In the Arabic language, the form VII has the anticausative meaning. For example, يَنْقَلِبُ⁩ ar means (the cause of his change is not known).

Urdu

Urdu uses a large number of antiaccusative verbs.

• کھانا پک رہا ہے ur
• پانی ابل رہا ہے ur

Ainu

In Ainu, there are two types of affixes that corresponding to the meaning of "by one's self", si- and yay-. The former is sometimes analyzed as anticausative and the latter is reflexive.

Japanese

In Standard Japanese, productive morphology highly favors transitivization, in the sense that it has productive causativization, but no anticausativization. In the Hokkaido dialects and Northern Tōhoku dialect, however, the anticausative morpheme ja is employed with some verbs, such as ja , ja , and ja as a means of producing an intransitive verb from a transitive verb.

Bardi

Bardi is an Australian Aboriginal language in the Nyulnyulan family which uses the root -jiidi- to denote anticausatives as part of complex predicate constructions. For example, whereas one might causatively 'close' a door with the following construction:

• boonda - ma - (y ERG closes x ABS)

a door might 'close' with the following construction

• boonda - jiidi - (x ABS closes)

In the underived construction, the light verb -ma- is used with a coverb (or preverb) boonda . In the anticausative construction, the light verb reduces the valency of the predicate and the item which is closed becomes the subject. This is a regular alternation among complex predicates.

Turkish

When an anticausative verb is used, the thing that is acted upon is placed as if it is the subject. Turkish converts the verb to an anticausative most commonly by the suffixes -l and -n.

• Kapıyı açtı. (The word door (kapı) takes the accusative suffix here.
• Kapı açıldı. (Kapı lost its case suffix and is treated as a subject)

References

References

1. "Возможность употребления глагола в среднем залоге как основный признак категории отложительности".
2. Anna Bugaeva. (2012). "The languages of Japan and Korea". Routledge.
3. Sasaki, Kan. (2013-03-31). "Anticausativization in the Hokkaido dialect of Japanese". Asian and African Languages and Linguistics.