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

⏟
AA
⏟
(61) [ v P
… v TR
[ AktP
… Akt G-CAUSE
[ VP
… 'be.built' … ]]]
V
As (60) and (61) show, Hindi causativization reduces to what we have independently observed
in Tundra Nenets and Malagasy. The AA morpheme realizes both v TR and Akt I-CAUSE in (60),
defeating V in the competition for Akt I-CAUSE due to the biggest match principle in (34).
However, it fails to realize Akt G-CAUSE in (61), and this is where V shows up. If (61) is on the
right track, the required ordering falls out with no effort at all: if V is an instance of Akt, the
position in between the root and AA is just the right place for it to appear.
5. Summary and conclusion
We have argued for radical predicate decomposition, which assumes, unlike standard
decomposition, that relations between subevents in the event structure are represented
independently both semantically and syntactically. We have presented three sets of
causativization facts – semantic, morphological, and cross-linguistic – that support this claim.
Subevents and their relations are independent, since, first, their semantic properties vary
independently, secondly, they can be spelled out by distinct morphological exponents, and
thirdly, because the independence predicts correctly the cross-linguistic variation. To the extent
that our arguments are solid, we believe that RPD offers a more appealing view of event
structure than the SPD alternative. Conceptually, it allows to eliminate a problematic
assumption that descriptive properties of subevent descriptions must be tightly connected to
characteristics of relations between subevents. Empirically, it enables a simple and elegant
explanation for the otherwise mysterious connection between the type of causation and pieces
of morphology that appear inside the causative morpheme in languages like Tatar, Tundra-
Nenets, Malagasy, and Hindi.
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