Basic causative verb patterns in Uralic: Retension and renewal in grammar and lexicon

This paper presents the formation of causative verbs and different causativization strategies in the Uralic languages as evidenced by six verb sets in 22 languages. The sample is a selection of basic verbs from a larger database including altogether 21 non-causal and causal verb pairs based on a slightly revised version of Nichols et al. (2004). Our sample illustrates the big picture of causativization in Uralic in the light of three animate verb pairs ‘eat’ / ‘feed’, ‘see’ / ‘show’, ‘fear, be afraid’ / ‘frighten, scare’ and three inanimate non-causal / causal pairs, namely ‘burn (intr.); catch fire’ / ‘burn (tr.); set afire’, ‘dry (intr.); get dry’ / ‘dry (tr.), dry out’ and ‘be straight; straighten out’ / ‘straighten; make straight’.
The sample shows some variation in the causativization strategies across the language family and different lexical types. However, the dominating characteristic of almost all investigated cases is that the Uralic languages prefer valency changing affixal morphology whereas other strategies are more random and result from verb-specific and language-specific historical development. A qualitative analysis of the diachronic development shows that, actually, most deviating patterns originate from former valency changing affixal morphology patterns as well.

Keywords: causative verbs, causativization, morphology, derivation, Uralic languages, language change