1.
Introduction
causative
constructions can be classified into the major types based on the productivity
or regularity of causative forms, namely, prodcutive causative and lexical
causatives. – 259
Productive
causatives are realized by the use of causative verbs, such as English cause and make and Korean ha-ta, or
the use of affixes, such as Japanese sase.
This means that productive causatives may be further classified into two
subtypes: syntactic and morphological causatives. – 259
Syntactic
causatives, which are alternatively called analytic causatives or periphrastic
causatives, are generally defined as the causatives formed by means of specific
verb of causation such as make, have,
cause in English, fare “make”, lasciare “let, allow” in Italian, and hay “let, allow” in Thai. -259
Morrphological
causatives, alternatively clled synthetic causatives, on the other hand, are
defined as causatives that are realized by means of morphological devices
applied to verbal forms, such as affixation in Russian and vowel alternation in
Armenian. -259
Lexical
causatives refer to morphologically irregular, nonproductive causative froms.
Lexical causatives are typically manifested in languages as a class of
transitive verbs referred to as causative transitive verbs, such as cut, destroy, open, melt, kill and boil in English. -259
It could be
claimed that a lexical causative which is manifested in the form of a
transitive verb, expresses two major subevents: the agent’s activity and the
patient’s change of state. – 259
2. The windowing
of attention in language:
The windowing of
attention in language is defined as a cognitive process which places a portion
of an event-frame into the foreground of attention by explicitly mentioning it,
while placing the remainder of event-frame into the background of attention by
omitting mentioning it. The portions that are foregrounded are said to be
‘windowed’ and the ones that are backgrounded are said to be ‘gapped’. – 261
According to
Talmy, the windowing of attention is only one part of the larger cognitive
structural category in language called the ‘distribution of attention’, which
is a system constituting the fundamental delineation of conceptual strucutring
in language. – 261
3. Semantic
differences between synatctic causatives and lexical causatives
The syntactic causatives,
which consist of a two-verb structure, names two separate events whereas
lexical causative expresses one single event with two subevents constituting
the causative situation (Shibatani 1976).
– 262
The crucial point
is that the cause and the effect in the syntactic causative are felt to be two
separate events whereas those in lexical causative are percieved as jointly
representing one single event. Haiman (1985) attributes this difference to the
role of iconicity in language. He claims that the linguistic distance in any
structure is generally motivated by the conceptual distance. – 262
Haiman claims
that the syntactic causative with two separate verbs has more linguistic
distance than the lexical causative and thus signals more conceptual distance
between causer and causee. – 262
Prototypical
causation is understood in terms of a cluster of ten interactional prperties,
such as the presence of a human agent who does something, the presence of a
patient which undergoes a change of state, the human nature of the agent, the
volition of the agent, an overlap in time and space of the agent’s action and
the patient’s change of state, a direct contact between the agent and the
patient, etc. – 262
The type of
causation that has the whole cluster of ten properties is categorized by Lakoff
as prototypical causation. Nonprototypical varities of causation are
characterized in terms of deviations from the cluster. – 262-263
Lexical
causatives tend to signal direct, manipulative causation whereas syntactic causatives
tend to express indirect causation. – 263
In direct
causation, the effect is brought about directly by means of direct contact by
the causer’s action whereas in indirect causation the effect is brought about
through a mediating agent. – 263
According to
Lakoff (1987), direct causation characterizes prototypical causation whereas
indirect causation is the non-prototypical kind. – 263
Lexical
causatives do not necessarily express direct causation in the strictly
objective sense, such as in the case of the verbs build in I will
build a house made of teak and clean in I cleaned this suit at
the dry-cleaning store. – 263
Talmy (1996)
explains this phenomena in terms of the theory of windowing of attention in
language. […] the windowing of attention in language is defined as “the system
with which languages can place a portion of a coherent referent situation into
the foreground of attention by the explicit mention of that portion while
placing the reminder of that situation into the background of attention by
omitting mention of it.” (Talmy 1996: 235) – 263-264
The cognitive
process in which the medial portion of the casual chain is reduced in conscious
conceptualization to the degree tha the discontinuous initials and final phases
may seem to be seamlessly linked to each other, is termed ‘conceptual slicing’
by Talmy (1996: 249) – 264
Conventionalized
scenarios “can be cognitively packaged as a single event even if an interesting
cause exists.” (Goldberg 1995: 169) - 264
4. Types of
lexical causatives in Thai
If we adopt the
definition of a lexical causative as a transitive verb which designates a
situation involving an activity representing a cause and a subsequent change of
state representing the effect, the lexical causative will, […], count as an
accomplishment verb as defined by Dowty (1979). – 264
4.1 Alternating
transitive verbs
4.1.1 Transitive
causative verbs alternating with activity verbs
4.1.2 Transitive
causative verbs alternating with inchoative and stative verbs
A clausal chain
according to Croft (1991) is a cognitive model of conceptualizing events in the
world, which is based on the interactions between entities and the transmission
of energy in the interactions. The clausal chain is thereore used as a
cognitive model to represent causation. – 266
4.1.3 Transitive
causative verbs alternating with stative verbs
4.1.4 Semantic
properties of alternating transitive verbs
The agent could
move the car by driving, In case the car moved downhill, the agent could push
the car for a few moments, stop, and let the car move downhill by itself. The
former case exemplifies the entraining causation type whereas the latter one
exemplifies the launching causation type. – 271
4.2
Non-alternating transitive verbs
4.2.1
Non-alternating transitive verbs with inherent effects
A telic situation
refers to a situation which consists of an activity which leaps up to a
culmination point, beyond which the activity cannnot continue. An atelic
situation, on the other hand, refers to a situation which is realized as soon
as it begins; it does not have to wait for a goal to be attained. – 272
According to the
theory of aspectology, the telicness of situations can be designated either by
verbs alone or by verbs combined with complements and/or modifiers. In the
latter case, the telicness is determined by the interactions of several factors
such as the verbs inherent meaning, and determiners, and the nature of the
verb’s arguments, that is, of the subject and object(s). – 272-73
The imperfective
aspect “denotes a complete situation, with beginning, middle, and end” (Comrie
1976: 18). The perfective aspect indicates a situation which is in progress and
which lacks an inceptive stage and/or a terminal stage. – 274
4.2.2
Non-alternating transitive verbs with potential effects
4.2.3 Semantic
properties of non-alternating transitive verbs
5. The so-called
suppletive lexical causative forms
6. Conclusine
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