Abstract:
The objectives of this study are to analyze morphological and analytic causatives in Spanish with regards to their structure, meaning and use and to identify the differences between the two types of causatives. It adopts the cognitive-functional approach. Analyses are based on authentic data both in spoken and written corpora. The findings indicate that Spanish morphological causatives are composed of adjectival or norminal roots and -ar, -ear, -izar, -ificar, -itar, -ecer, -iguar or -rentar suffixes and may be supplemented with a- or en- prefixes. The choice of affixation pattern is lexically determined and unpredictable. The causative meaning of de-adjectival verbs is to cause to become, while the meaning of de-nominal verbs is more diverse i.e. to cause to have, to cause to become or be similar to, to cause to be covered with, and to cause to be in. The causative meaning of a verb is determined by metonymic mapping and salience of the contiguous concept to the concept of the root. Analytic causatives inSpanish involve several causative verbs, namely hacer 'made', dejar 'let', obligar 'oblige', poner 'put', and forzar 'force'. The causative verbs hacer and poner have two types of complements: clausal complement and non-clausal complement. Constructions with non-clausal complement denote causative situations in which the caused event is a state, while constructions with clausal complement express causative situations where the caused event is a state or action. Causative verbs dejar, obligar and forzar only take clausal complements. Clausal complements have two constructions: the infinitive construction nd the subjunctive construction. The infinitive construction is generally preferred. However, when the complement clause contains several components, the subjunctive construction tends to be preferable. The heaviness effect and the principle of economy of effort are claimed to determine the choice between the two constructions. In addition, animacy of the causee and ambiguity avoidance are found to affect case-marking of the NP denoting the causee. The differences between morphological and analytic causatives are: morphological causatives only denote situations in which the caused event is a state, whereas analytic causatives are used to express events in which the caused event is either a state or an action. Morphological causatives have significant higher frequency of occurrence than analytic causatives. Causative events which occur most frequently are realized as morphological causatives. Causative events which are found only once in the corpora appear in analytic causative constructions. Such results can be explained by the principle of economy of effort and the Principle of Functional Transparency.