Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 9 (EISS 9 ... - CSSP - CNRS

čül-lä-n ‘turn into a desert (intr.)’ / čül-lä-n-der ‘turn into a desert (tr.)’ (čül ‘desert’)
saz-la-n ‘get waterlogged’ / saz-la-n-dɨr ‘make waterlogged, waterlog’ (saz ‘swamp’)
mumijä-lä-n ‘get mummified’/ mumijä-lä-n-der ‘mummify’ (mumijä ‘mummy’)
An obvious way of treating class 1 and class 2 verbs would be based on the assumption that
morphological asymmetry reflects distinct structures they project. In a Marantz-style
framework (Marantz 1997, Alexiadou et al. 2006), one is tempted to analyze class 1 transitive
verbs as in (19):
(19)
v TR √
LA
Their anticausative/inchoative variants would then be represented as in (20), where N can
be thought of as a spell-out of a functional head that takes vP as its complement. Given that
class 1 and class 2 inchoatives are morphologically identical, the structure in (20) naturally
extends to class 2 inchoatives. Following the same logic, class 2 transitives would involve an
extra projection where the causative morpheme is merged, as in (21).
(20) (21)
F TYR F 1
N v √ N v √
LA
(19) and (21) reflect a huge derivational asymmetry between class 1 and 2 transitives, the latter
representing more complex event structure, with one more subevent and one more thematic role
brought in by the TYR morpheme. Whatever consequences this complexity can have, we expect
to observe them when comparing class 2 and class 1 verbs. It should be also noted that (21) is
essentially the structure Guasti (2005) and Folli and Harley (2007) assign to Romance analytic
causatives with faire plus an infinitive. If this parallelism is taken seriously, class 2 Tatar
causatives are expected to be indirect, like their Romance counterparts.
The problem is that there is no detectable difference between class 1 and class 2 transitives.
They are identical in terms of argument structure, case marking of arguments, and eventuality
type: all involve a nominative subject and an accusative object, all license agents, events, and
natural forces as external arguments, and most are accomplishments. These characteristics are
illustrated in (22).
(22) Class 1: External argument: agent, event, or natural force, nominative
Internal argument: theme, accusative; eventuality type: telic
marat / jaŋgɨr külmäg-e-n jüeš-lä-de.
Marat rain shirt-3-ACC wet-LA-PST
‘Marat / the rain wet his shirt.’
(23) Class 2: External argument: agent, event, or natural force, nominative
Internal argument: theme, accusative; eventuality type: telic
ukɨtučɨ / universität-tä uku-ɨ marat-nɨ jaklaw-la-n-dɨr-dɨ.
teacher university-LOC study-3 Marat-ACC lazy-LA-N-TYR-PST.3SG
‘The teacher / studying at the university made Marat lazy.’
F 2
LA
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