2015 Volume 32 Issue 1 Pages 1-21
In this paper, I will deal with the following two questions: (i) How can we determine which verbs enter the causative alternation? (ii) What properties are responsible for the cross-linguistic variation we find in this domain? I will argue, building on Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2013), that eventualities need to contain a result component in order to participate in the causative alternation. In my discussion, I will have a closer look at the properties of causer external arguments, and examine the behavior of particular predicate classes in some detail. I will show that predicates that are considered to be translation equivalents actually have very different properties across languages. I will then offer some discussion as to the possible sources for crosslinguistic variation.
