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Ananticausative verb (abbreviatedANTIC) is anintransitive verb that shows an event affecting its subject, while giving no semantic or syntactic indication of the cause of the event. The singleargument of the anticausative verb (itssubject) is a patient, that is, what undergoes an action. One can assume that there is a cause or an agent of causation, but the syntactic structure of the anticausative makes it unnatural or impossible to refer to it directly. Examples of anticausative verbs arebreak,sink,move, etc.
Anticausative verbs are a subset ofunaccusative verbs. Although the terms are generally synonymous, some unaccusative verbs are more obviously anticausative, while others (fall,die, etc.) are not; it depends on whether causation is defined as having to do with an animate volitional agent (does "falling" mean "being accelerated down by gravity" or "being dropped/pushed down by someone"? Is "old age" a causation agent for "dying"?).
A distinction must be made between anticausative andautocausative verbs. A verb is anticausative if the agent is unspecified but assumed to be external (or even if its existence is denied), and it is autocausative if the agent is the same as the patient. Many Indo-European languages lack separate morphological markings for these two classes, and the correct class needs to be derived from context:
(Lithuanian)
(Russian)
InEnglish, many anticausatives are of the class of "alternatingambitransitive verbs", where the alternation between transitive and intransitive forms produces a change of the position of the patient role (the transitive form has a patientive direct object, and this becomes the patientive subject in the intransitive). This phenomenon is calledcausative alternation. For example:
Passive voice is not an anticausative construction. In passive voice, the agent of causation is demoted from its position as a core argument (the subject), but it can optionally be re-introduced using an adjunct (in English, commonly, aby-phrase). In the examples above,The window was broken,The ship was sunk would clearly indicate causation, though without making it explicit.
In theRomance languages, many anticausative verbs are formed through apseudo-reflexive construction, using acliticpronoun (which is identical to the non-emphaticreflexive pronoun) applied on a transitive verb. For example (inSpanish, using the cliticse):
Another example inFrench:
In theSlavic languages, the use is essentially the same as in the Romance languages. For example (inSerbo-Croatian, usingse):
In East Slavic languages (such asRussian), the pronounse becomes postfixsja (orsʹ after a vowel in Russian).
The suffix-sja has a large number of uses and does not necessarily denote anticausativity (or even intransitivity). However, in most cases it denotes either passive voice or one of the subclasses of reflexivity (anticausativity, reciprocity, etc.)
There is a class of verbs (deponent verbs,отложительные глаголыotložitelʹnyje glagoly which only exist in this reflexive form (the suffix-sja can't be removed). These are commonly anticausative or autocausative, and commonly refer to emotions, behavior, or factors outside one's control.[1]
In addition, a verb may be put into an unaccusative/anticausative form by forming an impersonal sentence, with the verb typically either in its past tense neuter form, or in its present tense third person form:
Here as well there is aclass of "impersonal verbs", which only exist in this impersonal form:
In theArabic language, the form VII has the anticausative meaning. For example,يَنْقَلِبُyanqalibu means'he himself changes' (the cause of his change is not known).
Urdu uses a large number of antiaccusative verbs.
In Ainu, there are two types of affixes that corresponding to the meaning of "by one's self",si- andyay-. The former is sometimes analyzed as anticausative and the latter is reflexive.[2]
∅=si-pusu
3SG/3PL.SUBJ=ANTIC-set.afloat
He spontaneously floated to the surface.
∅=yay-pusu
3SG/3PL.SUBJ=REFL-set.afloat
He (swam and) floated to the surface by himself.
InStandard Japanese, productive morphology highly favors transitivization, in the sense that it has productive causativization, but no anticausativization. In theHokkaido dialects and NorthernTōhoku dialect, however, the anticausative morphemerasar is employed with some verbs, such asmaku'to roll',tsumu'to load', andokuru'to send' as a means of producing an intransitive verb from a transitive verb.[3]
Bardi is anAustralian Aboriginal language in theNyulnyulan family which uses the root-jiidi-'go' to denote anticausatives as part ofcomplex predicate constructions. For example, whereas one might causatively 'close' a door with the following construction:
a door might 'close' with the following construction
In the underived construction, thelight verb-ma-'put' is used with a coverb (or preverb)boonda'close'. In the anticausative construction, the light verb reduces thevalency of the predicate and the item which is closed becomes the subject. This is a regular alternation among complex predicates.
When an anticausative verb is used, the thing that is acted upon is placed as if it's the subject. Turkish converts the verb to an anticausative most commonly by the suffixes-l and-n.
There is no morphologically distinctive class of adjectives. The content expressed by adjectives in other languages is expressed by intransitive verbs in Ainu, cf. (14b).
