Abstract
In the well-known causative alternation, a verb appears either in a causative-transitive or in an inchoative-intransitive form. The inchoative form is marked with a reflexive clitic in some languages, such as Norwegian, but is unmarked in others, such as English. There are two main proposals to explain the alternation: a lexical-derivational account (a lexical rule is responsible for the demotion of the cause argument), and a syntactic-derivational one (in a type of reflexivization, the theme/patient is construed as responsible for causing the event). A third type of approach posits that the alternation emerges when a verb can be found in different constructions and no derivation is involved. Lundquist et al. (Glossa J Gen Linguist 1:1–30, 2016) put the first two approaches to experimental testing and found that while the decausativization approach is adequate for English, the reflexivization approach explains the Norwegian facts. The present experimental study investigates which proposal is adequate to explain the alternation in Brazilian Portuguese. Differently from both English and Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese allows reflexive-marked and unmarked inchoatives with the same verb. In a replication of Lundquist et al.’s (Glossa J Gen Linguist 1:1–30, 2016) experiment, our results show that Brazilian Portuguese assigns distinct meanings to the two forms of the inchoative. We conclude that the reflexive pronoun se indicates that the change of state described in the inchoative sentence was caused by some entity, but not an agent. We then argue that a non-derivational approach explains the alternation, as a single verb occurs in distinct syntactic configurations, with distinct meaning implications.
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Data Availability
Data is available at http://www.letras.ufmg.br/padrao_cms/documentos/nucleos/nupes/Experimento%20NUPES%20-%20dados%20corrigidos.xlsx; Materials are available at https://eduplay.rnp.br/portal/playlist/108506.
Notes
This intransitive structure goes by many names. Here we call it inchoative, following Lakoff (1970), as opposed to anticausative, the term coined by Haspelmath (1993) and chosen by Lundquist et al. (2016). Our choice of naming highlights the structure’s semantic features and its independence from its causative counterpart.
Se is a third person singular and plural reflexive pronoun, and is also commonly used for second person singular and plural and first person plural. Me and nos are used for first person singular and plural, respectively, and te is used for second person singular. Less commonly, vos is used for second person plural (only in very specific contexts and regions of Brazil).
Considering that speakers of the Minas Gerais dialect tend not to use the clitic se, the inchoative sentences used in the experiment were verified in language use, in order to guarantee their grammaticality for such speakers. All structures in Table 4 were attested in local newspapers, written, and read in Minas Gerais. Examples are provided at: http://www.letras.ufmg.br/padrao_cms/documentos/nucleos/nupes/Attested%20examples.pdf.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the financial support from the Minas Gerais State Agency for Research and Development (FAPEMIG—Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais), process APQ-00693-18, from the Federal Center for Technological Education of Minas Gerais (CEFET-MG), and from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq—Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico). They also thank all students who voluntarily participated in the experiment, and all professors who transformed part of the time of their classes into experimental sessions. The authors thank specially Thaís Bechir, Izabella Mendes, and Kelly de Oliveira, for acting out the scenes of the videos. And the authors also thank Björn Lundquist and Gilliam Ramchand for sharing the materials of the original experiment and for previous discussions.
Funding
Financial support was received from the Minas Gerais State Agency for Research and Development (FAPEMIG—Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais), process APQ-00693-18, from the Federal Center for Technological Education of Minas Gerais (CEFET-MG), and from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq—Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico).
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Amaral, L., Oliveira, F. & Oliveira, C. The Meaning of Inchoative se in Brazilian Portuguese: A Replication of Lundquist et al.’s (2016) Experiment. J Psycholinguist Res 52, 2567–2598 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-023-09999-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-023-09999-4