Passivization of Morphological Causatives in Azeri (Serish Abad, Ghorveh): Severing the External Argument from the Causative Verb

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D. Candidate of Linguistics, Department of English Language & Literature, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran

2 Associate Professor of Linguistics, Department of English & Linguistics, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran

3 Professor of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

4 Assistant Professor of English Literature, Department of English Language & Literature, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran

5 Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, Department of English Language & Literature, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran

Abstract

Two approaches can be identified to how external arguments are introduced to the event structure of verbal predicates. One approach takes the causative/little verb as the functional head introducing the external argument to the structure. Another approach assumes that the external argument is severed from the verb phase and introduced by a voice head to the structure. In this paper, it is argued that the voice head is involved in introducing the external argument to the structure. The evidence corroborating the proposed analysis is adduced from the interaction of morphological causatives and passivization in Azeri, spoken in Serish Abad, Ghorveh. The causative verb in Azeri is derived from the anti-causative counterpart through the addition of a causative morpheme. A closer inspection of data shows that the derived causative verb can appear in the passive construction. The fact that the external argument is suppressed in the passive construction and that the causative verb retains its causative morpheme provides evidence that the causative morpheme (vº) is not responsible for introducing the external argument. The correlation of the passive morphology and the external argument suppression fits squarely within the approach taking voice to be licensing the external argument.

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References

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Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects
Volume 10, Issue 3 - Serial Number 38
October 2022
Pages 109-126

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