Chapter 2 - LOT publications

Chapter 2
But if the causee (‘woman’ in 8a) is a nominal element and not a pronominal element,
then the patient (‘light’ in 8a) which is sentence initial can be marked for a
nominative case as shown below:
8a. ibsaa-n dubartii barbaačč-is-a
light-NOM woman look for- CAUS 1 -3M:IMPF
‘A woman needs light.’ / lit., ‘It makes woman look for light.’
8b. dubartii-n bišaan barbaad-de
woman-NOM water look for-3F:PF
‘A woman looked for water.’
9a. biiftuu-n baa-te
sun-NOM rise-3F:PF
‘The sun rose.
9b. biiftuu-n nama barbaačč-is-a
sun-NOM man look for- CAUS 1 -3M:IMPF
‘Human being needs sun.’/lit., ‘It makes human being need sun.’
Although they are marked for nominative case, initial constituents ibsaa-n ‘light’
and biiftuu-n ‘the sun’ are not the subjects of (8a) and (9b) as it is clear from the
third person masculine agreement on the verb; ‘light’ is masculine while ‘sun’ is
feminine but has no subject agreement on the verb which has a 3M ending, despite
the fact that the nominal ‘sun’ has nominative case in (9b). In constructions with
impersonal passives we will encounter similar cases of sentence initial consituents
being marked by the nominative but not being subject.
In subjectless causative structure the causer is not present in the event. In this type of
structure, word order is strict and not free: the patient precedes the causee which is
followed by the causative verb. In most cases such event is expressed by imperfective
aspect. Similar to impersonal passives, the subject agreement element on the
verb is the third person masculine singular (see Chapter 7). Subjectless causative
verbs are single causatives; they have only one single causative morpheme attached
to their bases. These causative verbs typically occur with verbs of desire and we will
see that in Anharic they are restricted to verbs of desire. Subjectless causative verbs
such as ɗaraa-sis- ‘long for’, haww-isiis- from haww- ‘to wish for’, ɗara-sis-
from ɗaraʔ- ‘long for’ and kajel-sis- from kajel- ‘want’ do not allow expression of
a causer in other constructions while the verb barbaačč-is- ‘make look for’ does.
Verbs such as ɗaraa-sis- ‘make long for’ differ from barbaačč-is- ‘make look
for’ because of their lexical properties in the sense that the former is purely a verb of
desire while the latter can be a verb of desire and causative verb as shown in (10).
18