Lexical Valence Typology project: Instructions for elicitation of causative-noncausative verb pairs

Author : Johanna Nichols

Publication date : 2003

Bibliographical references :

Nichols, Johanna, David Peterson, and Jonathan Barnes. 2004. Transitivizing and detransitivizing languages. Linguistic Typology 8:149–211.

Goals

"The goal of this project is to typologize languages in terms of whether they tend to treat intransitives as basic and transitives as derived, vice versa, both, or neither. Pairs of verbs with causative and non-causative semantics are a good arena for testing for types, and we are eliciting or looking up a standard list of 18 pairs of verb glosses in a number of different languages. (The typology is described in J. Nichols, D. A. Peterson, and J. Barnes, 'Transitivizing and detransitivizing languages', Linguistic Typology 89:2.149-211, 2004.) Note that we seek causative and non-causative semantics; this may or may not correspond to causative morphology in your language.
It is best if the work can be done by a linguist experienced with the language working with a native speaker and consulting published dictionaries if they exist." (Nichols, 2003: 1)

Protocol summary

"The project seeks (if possible) one pair of verbs for each of the 18 pairs of glosses listed below. The descriptions 'causative' and 'non-causative' are semantic labels. Only lexicalized verbs are sought." (Nichols, 2003​: 1).

Firstly, the author gives the list of the 18 pairs of verbs in English, and then offers a suggested elicitation protocol.
"Sessions begin by eliciting two common personal names in the language, and these are then used in place of X and Y in the following sentences. The investigator is free to vary tense and aspect categories, nouns, and names if this helps create a more natural context, and in general the investigator is free to depart from the list if the native speaker suggests better contexts for the verbs." (Nichols, 2003: 5)
There are 36 sentences.

Development context

It was developed to examine strategies for causativizing and decausativizing. For further discussion, see: Nichols, Johanna, David Peterson, and Jonathan Barnes. 2004. Transitivizing and detransitivizing languages. Linguistic Typology 8:149–211.