Startseite European analytic causatives as a comparative concept: Evidence from a parallel corpus of film subtitles
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

European analytic causatives as a comparative concept: Evidence from a parallel corpus of film subtitles

  • Natalia Levshina EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 10. November 2015
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This study investigates formal and functional variation in analytic causatives (ACs) in eighteen European languages from the Indo-European and Uralic language families. Employing the comparative concept approach, the paper presents a probabilistic semantic map of the main functions of ACs on the basis of a multilingual parallel corpus of film subtitles. This method enables us to detect common dimensions of semantic variation in ACs and to pinpoint cross-linguistic commonalities in the form–meaning mapping. The paper also presents three case studies, which test previous hypotheses about the grammaticalization clines in Romance and Germanic and facts of language contact between German and Slavic languages. The role of language contact is further explored in quantitative analyses that compare how the languages “carve up” the semantic space of causation. The results of this comparison suggest that frequently occurring semantically vague ACs may be regarded as a feature of Standard Average European.

Acknowledgements

The author is very grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their useful feedback and constructive criticisms and to Hubert Cuyckens for his numerous insightful suggestions. Of course, all remaining imperfections are the author’s own responsibility. This study was funded by the Belgian research foundation F.R.S. – FNRS, whose generosity is most gratefully acknowledged. All usual disclaimers apply.

Abbreviations

Descriptive categories
ad

adessive

art

article

comp

complementizer

conj

conjunction

cneg

connegative

dat

dative

fut

future

imp

imperative

inf

infinitive

ipfv

imperfective

neg

negation

part

partitive

PastPart

past participle

pfv

perfective

pl

plural

prs

present

pst

past

refl

reflexive

sbjv

subjunctive

sg

singular

V1st

(Fin.) 1st infinitive

Vda

(Est.) -da-infinitive

Ved

(En.) past participle

Vfin

verb is a finite form

Vill

(Fin.) 3rd infinitive in illative

Vind

verb in indicative

Vinf

infinitive

Vinfl

(Por.) inflected infinitive

Ving

(En.) present participle

Vma

(Est.) -ma-infinitive

Vsubj

verb in subjunctive

Languages
Bul.

Bulgarian

Cz.

Czech

Du.

Dutch

En.

English

Est.

Estonian

Fin.

Finnish

Fr.

French

Ger.

German

It.

Italian

Hun.

Hungarian

Nor.

Norwegian

Pol.

Polish

Por.

Portuguese

Rom.

Romanian

Rus.

Russian

Sl.

Slovenian

Sp.

Spanish

Sw.

Swedish

Appendix

ACs found in the corpus

Indo-European, Romance

FrenchItalianPortugueseRomanianSpanish
autoriser à Vinfcostringere a Vinfdar para Vinfa convinge sǎVsubjdejar Vinf
faire Vinffare Vinfdeixar Vinfa face sǎVsubjforzar a Vinf
forcer à Vinflasciare VinfdeixarVinfla lǎsa sǎVsubjhacer Vinf
laisser Vinfpermettere di Vinffazer VinffazerVinfla permite sǎVsubjobligar a Vinf
obliger à Vinfobbligare a Vinfforçar a Vinfa pune sǎVsubjpermitir Vinf
permettre de Vinfobrigar a Vinf
permitir Vinf

Indo-European, Germanic

DutchEnglishGermanNorwegianSwedish
doen Vinfallow to Vinfbringen zum Vinf PastPartfå til å Vinffå att Vinf
dwingen om teforce to Vinferlauben zu Vinfla Vinflåta Vinf
Vinfget to Vinflassen Vinftillate å Vinftvinga att Vinf
laten Vinfhave Vinftvinge til å Vinf
have PastPart
let Vinf
make Vinf
permit to Vinf

Indo-European, Slavic

BulgarianCzechPolishRussianSlovenian
davam daVfindávat Vinfdawać Vinfdavat’ Vinfdati daVfin
karam daVfindovolovat abyVfinpozwalać Vinfpozvoljat’ Vinfdati Vinf
nakarvam daVfinnechávat abyVfinzmuszaćVfinrazrešat’ Vinfdopuščati Vinf
ostavjam daVfinnechávatzmuszać żebyzastavljat’ Vinfdovoliti daVfin
pozvoljavam daVfinpřimět VinfVinfdovoliti Vinf
razrešavam daVfinpřinucovat abyVfinzmuszać żeby Vinfpuščati daVfin
přinucovat VinfVinfpuščati najVfin
puščati Vinf
siliti daVfin
siliti Vinf

Uralic, Finno-Ugric

EstonianFinnishHungarian
ajamaVmaantaaV1stended Vinf
andmaVdakiristääVillhagy Vinf
laskmaVdapäästääVillkényszerít hogyVfin
lubamaVdapakottaaVill
panemaVmapannaVill
sundimaVmasaadaVill
salliaV1st

References

Achard, Michel. 1993. Causative structures in French: Word order following faire, laisser, and forcer. In Joshua S. Guenter, Barbara A. Kaiser & Cheryl C. Zoll (eds.), Proceedings of the nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General session and parasession of semantic typology and semantic universals, 1–12. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.10.3765/bls.v19i1.1501Suche in Google Scholar

Baron, Naomi S. 1974. The structure of English causatives. Lingua 33(4). 299–342.10.1016/0024-3841(74)90044-8Suche in Google Scholar

Cerbasi, Donato. 1997. Las construcciones causativas del typo hacer+Infinitivo en español, portugués e italiano. Lingüístuca Española Actual 19. 155–171.Suche in Google Scholar

Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic categories and grammatical relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Degand, Liesbeth. 1996. Causation in Dutch and French: Interpersonal aspects. In Ruqaya Hasan, Carmel Cloran & David Butt (eds.), Functional descriptions: Theory in practice, 207–235. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.121.08degSuche in Google Scholar

De Leeuw, Jan & Patrick Mair. 2009. Multidimensional Scaling using majorization: SMACOF in R. Journal of Statistical Software 31(3). 1–30. http://www.jstatsoft.org/v31/i03/ (accessed 27 March 2015).10.18637/jss.v031.i03Suche in Google Scholar

Dixon, R. M. W. 2000. A typology of causatives: Form, syntax and meaning. In R. M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), Changing valency: Case studies in transitivity, 30–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511627750.003Suche in Google Scholar

Evans, Nickolas. 2010. Semantic typology. In Jae Jung Song (ed.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic typology, 504–533. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199281251.013.0024Suche in Google Scholar

Friedman, Victor A. 2006. Balkans as a linguistic area. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edn., 657–672. Oxford: Elsevier.10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00178-4Suche in Google Scholar

Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. 2010. Corpus, cognition and causative constructions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/scl.39Suche in Google Scholar

Givón, Talmy. 1980. The binding hierarchy and the typology of complements. Studies in Language 4(3). 333–377.10.1075/sl.4.3.03givSuche in Google Scholar

Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59(4). 781–819.10.2307/413373Suche in Google Scholar

Haspelmath, Martin. 2001. The European linguistic area: Standard Average European. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wolfgang Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook, 1492–1510. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110171549.2Suche in Google Scholar

Haspelmath, Martin. 2008. Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries. Cognitive Linguistics 19(1). 1–33.10.1515/COG.2008.001Suche in Google Scholar

Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663–687.10.1353/lan.2010.0021Suche in Google Scholar

Kemmer, Suzanne & Arie Verhagen. 1994. The grammar of causatives and the conceptual structure of events. Cognitive Linguistics 5. 115–156.10.1515/cogl.1994.5.2.115Suche in Google Scholar

Kulikov, Leonid I. 2001. Causatives. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wolfgang Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook, 886–898. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Suche in Google Scholar

Lamiroy, Béatrice. 2011. Degrés de grammaticalisation à travers les langues de même famille. In Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris : Nouvelle Série, Vol. 19, 167–192. Leuven: Peeters.Suche in Google Scholar

Leino, Jaakko. 2012. Analytical expressions for permissive causation in Finnish. In Jakko Leino & Ruprecht von Waldenfels (eds.), Analytical causatives: From ‘give’ and ‘come’ to ‘let’ and ‘make’, 221–246. München: Lincom Europa.Suche in Google Scholar

Levshina, Natalia. In press a. Film subtitles as a corpus: An n-gram approach. To appear in Corpora.Suche in Google Scholar

Levshina, Natalia. In press b. Verbs of letting in Germanic and Romance languages: A quantitative investigation based on a parallel corpus of film subtitles. To appear in Languages in Contrast.Suche in Google Scholar

Lowrey, Brian. 2013. The old English causative hatan and its demise. Token 2. 23–43. http://www.ujk.edu.pl/token/issues/volume-2/ (accessed 27 March 2015).Suche in Google Scholar

Nedjalkov, Vladimir. 1976. Kausativkonstruktionen. Tübingen: TBL.Suche in Google Scholar

Newman, John. 1996. Give: A cognitive linguistic study. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110823714Suche in Google Scholar

Péteri, Attila. 2012. The Hungarian imperative particle hadd: A contrastive look at the development of analogous markers of sentence mood in some European languages. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 59. 439–63.10.1556/ALing.59.2012.4.3Suche in Google Scholar

Rawoens, Gudrun. 2012. Analytical causative constructions in Swedish: An analysis of syntactic and semantic patterns. In Jakko Leino & Ruprecht von Waldenfels (eds.), Analytical causatives: From ‘give’ and ‘come’ to ‘let’ and ‘make’, 105–124. München: Lincom Europa.Suche in Google Scholar

Rawoens, Gudrun. 2013. The Swedish verb låta ‘let’ from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Language Sciences 36. 113–123.10.1016/j.langsci.2012.04.002Suche in Google Scholar

Soares da Silva, Augusto. 2012. Stages of grammaticalization of causative verbs and constructions in Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian. Folia Linguistica 46(2). 513–552.10.1515/flin.2012.018Suche in Google Scholar

Soares da Silva, Augusto. 2007. Verbs of letting: Some cognitive and historical aspects. In Nicole Delbecque & Bert Cornillie (eds.), On interpreting construction schemas: From action and motion to transitivity and causality, 171–200. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Suche in Google Scholar

Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/6847.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Tamm, Anne. 2012. Let me introduce the Estonian analytical causatives: The permissive and factitive laskma ‘let, make, have, allow, permit’. In Jakko Leino & Ruprecht von Waldenfels (eds.), Analytical causatives: From ‘give’ and ‘come’ to ‘let’ and ‘make’, 247–289. München: Lincom Europa.Suche in Google Scholar

Tiedemann, Jörg. 2012. Parallel data, tools and interfaces in OPUS. In Proceedings of the eighth international conference on language resources and evaluation (LREC-2012 Istanbul, 21–27 May), 2214–2218.Suche in Google Scholar

Uiboaed, Kristel, Cornelius Hasselblatt, Liina Lindström, Kadri Muischnek & John Nerbonne. 2013. Variation of verbal constructions in Estonian dialects. Literary & Linguistic Computing 28(1). 42–62.10.1093/llc/fqs053Suche in Google Scholar

van der Auwera, Johan. 1998. Conclusion. In Johan van der Auwera (ed.), Adverbial constructions in the languages of Europe, 813–36. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110802610.813Suche in Google Scholar

van der Auwera, Johan & Kalyanamalini Sahoo. In press. On comparative concepts and descriptive categories, such as they are. To appear in Acta Linguistica Hafniensia.Suche in Google Scholar

Van der Horst, Joop M. 1998. Doen in Old and Early Middle Dutch: A comparative approach. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon de Ostade, Marijke van der Wal & Arjan van Leuvenstijn (eds.), ‘Do’ in English, Dutch and German: History and present-day variation, 53–64. Münster: Nodus Publikationen.Suche in Google Scholar

van Haeringen, Coenraad B. 1956. Nederlands tussen Duits en Engels [Dutch between German and English]. Den Haag: Servire.Suche in Google Scholar

Verhagen, Arie & Suzanne Kemmer. 1997. Interaction and causation: Causative constructions in modern standard Dutch. Journal of Pragmatics 24. 61–82.10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00003-3Suche in Google Scholar

von Waldenfels, Ruprecht. 2012a. Finnish antaa and Russian davat’ ‘to give’ as causatives: A contrastive analysis. In Jakko Leino & Ruprecht von Waldenfels (eds.), Analytical causatives: From ‘give’ and ‘come’ to ‘let’ and ‘make’, 187–220. München: Lincom Europa.Suche in Google Scholar

von Waldenfels, Ruprecht. 2012b. The grammaticalization of ‘give’+infinitive: A comparative study of Russian, Polish and Czech. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110293777Suche in Google Scholar

von Waldenfels, Ruprecht. 2015. Grammaticalized ‘give’ in Slavic between drift and contact: Causative, modal, imperative and existential constructions. In Brian Nolan, Gudrun Rawoens & Elke Diedrichsen (eds.), Causation, permission, and transfer: Argument realisation in GET, TAKE, PUT, GIVE and LET verbs, 107–127. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.167.03walSuche in Google Scholar

Wälchli, Bernhard & Michael Cysouw. 2012. Lexical typology through similarity semantics: Toward a semantic map of motion verbs. Linguistics 50(3). 671–710.10.1515/ling-2012-0021Suche in Google Scholar

Wiemer, Björn. 2014. Quo vadis grammaticalization theory? Why complex language change is like words. Folia Linguistica 48(2). 425–467.10.1515/flin.2014.015Suche in Google Scholar

Revised: 2014-11-13
Revised: 2015-3-9
Revised: 2015-3-19
Accepted: 2015-6-21
Published Online: 2015-11-10
Published in Print: 2015-11-1

©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton

Heruntergeladen am 17.11.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/flin-2015-0017/pdf
Button zum nach oben scrollen