S = P. One of the most productive alternations corresponds to causative-inchoative alternations in other languages, restricted to externally caused change of state predicates (in the sense of Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995) such as bag ‘break’. Formally, UVs of externally caused change of state are defined by the property, unique to members of this class, of forming inchoative complex predicates with the intransitive verb gajgany ‘go’ in a secondary sense of ‘state change’, indicating a completely unspecified cause, but not with other locomotion verbs. All UVs that meet this formal criterion encode a change of state which leads to some kind of abnormal result state, usually irreversible and undesirable, i.e. destruction or destabilisation. With these UVs a causing event can be specified, either with the intransitive IVs gardbany ‘fall’ (to express a change of state arising from contact with a location) and garna ‘burn’ (to express change of state resulting from heat), or, in the transitive causative alternants, by one of several IVs expressing contact and force with different types of instruments or trajectories of impact.
Verb Meaning | Verb form | Basic coding frame | Derived coding frame | Occurs | Comment | # Ex. | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|