proto-southwestern-tai revised: a new reconstruction - seals 22

Thai Eventivity & Stativity 91
(door)”, pə̀ət pratuu “open (door), pha� (ba�an)“demolish (house)”, da�p (thian) “blow out
(candle)”, kho�on (to�nma�y) “fell (tree)” (Thepkanjana 2000:267).
(9) a. sudaa pə̀ət pratuu
Suda open gate
‘Suda opened the gate.’ (Thepkanjana 2000:268)
b. pratuu pə̀ət
gate open
‘The gate opened./The gate was open.’ (Thepkanjana 2000:268)
The verb pə̀ət delivers a causative reading when it is used as a transitive verb as in (9a). In
contrast, the interpretation wavers between an inchoative reading and a resultant reading
when it is used as an intransitive verb as in (9b). Some Thai causative change-of-state
verbs can thus denote the state of the object entity by being used as intransitive verbs. The
function of these verbs cannot be identified by their forms alone, but can be identified only
by the way they are used in context.
Considering Thepkanjana’s (2000) analysis of the interpretational ambiguity of the
verbs like pə̀ət ‘open’, it can be assumed that Thai encompasses an extra type of “stative
verb” which indicate either state-change or resultant state (inchoative/stative alternation in
Thepkanjana’s terminology) other than the stative verb which describe simple states
without an additional inchoative meaning.
(10) a. fâay maw
Faay {be/get} drunk
‘Faay {is/got} drunk.’
b. fâay rúu khwaam-ciŋ
Faay know NOM-true
‘Faay knows the truth.’ (NOT ‘Faay got to know the truth.’)
The state denoted by this type of verb differs from the state denoted by the verb which
does not involve inchoative/stative alternation such as rúu ‘know’ and sǔay ‘beautiful’.
The former denotes a temporary or unsustainable state, while the latter usually indicates a
rather constant state which does not involve any “temporal boundary” as is pointed out by
Kageyama (1996) with respect to the English stative verb know. In other words, the states
represented by the verbs without inchoative/stative alternation can be identified with
“individual” states, and those by the verbs including the example in (10a) with “stagelevel”
states in the sense of Carlson (1977).
According to Kageyama (2006:97), stage-level states involve an “event argument”
[E-argument], which is linked to “eventivity”, in contrast to individual-level states, which
lack such a link. He suggests that “only sentences of event description have an Eargument;
stative sentences of property description do not have one” (2006:96). I employ
the terminology of “eventivity” to signify an element of event dynamics. Following
Kageyama’s proposal, I claim that Thai stative predicates such as rúu ‘know’ and mii
‘have’, as well as predicates such as sǔay ‘beautiful’ and dii ‘good’, do not have an Eargument,
while those like nɯ̀ ay ‘{be/get}tired’ and maw ‘{be/get} drunk’ in (10) have
one. The adverb bɔ̀y ‘often’ seems to be able to cooccur with the verbs which involve an