Causatives in Iraqi Arabic: A First Phase Syntactic Analysis

Abstract

This research explores the syntax and semantics of causation in Iraqi Arabic with reference to First Phase Syntax (Ramchand, 2008). The study contributes to the debate on the lexical vs. syntactic nature of verbal meaning. The research explores causatives and their lexical, periphrastic, and morphological varieties in a unified framework of event structure. The study employs a qualitative, theory-driven analysis based on a number of examples from Iraqi Arabic. These are explained in terms of the threefold structure of initP (initiation), procP (process) and resP (result), which is responsible for the distribution of participant roles including Initiator, Undergoer and Resultee. The analysis shows that although there are different types of causatives in terms of their surface expression, structurally, they all have a similar underlying structure, in which causation is expressed syntactically, rather than lexically. Morphological causatives have integrated event structures; periphrastic causatives have event embedding and lexical causatives show compact realization of causation in single verbal. In all of these cases, argument roles are structurally determined. This work contributes new data from Iraqi Arabic to the discussion of interaction of syntax and lexicon and the explanatory nature of syntactic analyses of event structure and causation.