Causativeresultatives

Causativeresultatives are a class of grammatical constructions in which a causative action is combined with a resultative element to indicate that the cause directly produces a specific outcome. The term originates from the intersection of the causative‑resultative research tradition in typology and the notion of “causative morphosyntax” in generative grammar. Scholars use the label to describe verbs that encode both “making someone do something” and “the resultant state” in a single morphological or syntactic form.

In many Austronesian languages, such as Tagalog, the causative marker “-in” is often co‑used with the resultative marking “-in” or an affix that indicates a completed change of state. The English counterpart can be seen where verbs like “break” appear in causative constructions “The teacher broke the rule” and resultativally in “The teacher broke the rule, resulting in a penalty.” Japanese presents a similar phenomenon: the causative‑receiving construction “kaku‑kex‑e” indicates that the subject causes someone else to write, and the result is implied by the context. In Turkish, the causative “ver-” combined with the change‑of‑state suffix “-t” yields forms like “yaz-ı-ver-t” (cause to write and it becomes written).

Theoretical work has debated whether causative‑resultative forms are derived compositionally or whether they represent a distinct morphological template. Computational models in corpora of Germanic, Slavic, and Turkic languages show a correlation between the number of causative‑resultative verbs and the presence of extensive aspectual morphology. Further research explores the interface between syntax, semantics, and morphology, aiming to clarify the cognitive mechanisms that allow speakers to efficiently encode causal‑resultative relations in a single word.