The semantics of the two causative suffixes -Ci and -Cii in Andong dialect

3.1 Shibatani and Chung’s (2002) three causative situations

Shibatani and Chung (2002) classify causative situations into three types: (i) direct causation, (ii) sociative causation, and (iii) indirect causation. The examples in (3a, b, c) represent the three types of causation, respectively.

According to Shibatani and Chung (2002), three types of causation are characterized as follows. Direct causation (3a) is characterized by an agentive causer, a patient causee, and a spatiotemporal overlap of the causing and caused events. As a result, there is no time lag or spatial multiplicity between two events. Sociative causation (3b) is characterized by an agentive causer, an agentive causee, and a spatiotemporal overlap of the events. Indirect causation (3c) is characterized by an agentive causer, an agentive causee, and no spatiotemporal overlap of the events.

Shibatani and Chung (2002) claim that, in Standard Korean, the morphological causative with -i, -hi, -li, -ki, -wu, -kwu, or -chwu only expresses direct or sociative causation as in (3a) and (3b), respectively, and indirect causation is expressed by the analytic (or periphrastic) causative construction with -key ha “COMP do” as in (3c). The data that I have collected also show that indirect causation is expressed only by the analytic form -key ha rather than by one of the causative suffixes in Andong dialect in the same way as Standard Korean. Since we are concerned with the usage of the causative suffixes in Andong dialect, we will limit our discussion to direct and sociative causation in the rest of this article.

Shibatani and Chung (2002) have also divided sociative causation into three subcategories: (a) joint-action sociative, (ii) assistive sociative, and (iii) supervision sociative. However, since I was not able to collect adequate data on joint-action sociative causation, only assistive and supervision sociative causation will be discussed in this section.

3.2 Basic correspondence

Section 3.2 will examine the basic correspondence between the causative suffixes and the types of causative situation. In the typical direct causative situation, only the single form -Ci is used. In assistive sociative causative situation, either the single form -Ci or the double form -Cii is used. In supervision sociative causative situation, only the double form -Cii is used.

3.3 Nontypical direct causative

As argued in Section 3.2.1, direct causative is marked with -Ci in principle. However, some types of direct causatives are marked with -Cii. These types of direct causatives are not typical from a semantic point of view. In what follows, I will refer to them as nontypical direct causatives. Nontypical direct causatives are subdivided into two types: (i) those in which the causing event occurs voluntarily rather than by the volitional action of the causer and (ii) those in which the caused event occurs in the causee’s inner sphere.

3.4 Pseudo-causative

Here the pseudo-causative construction is defined as a construction that contains a causative suffix morphologically but lucks a decausativized counterpart and has a different meaning from a genuine causative.^[9] In pseudo-causative constructions, the verb stem is attached with -Ci rather than -Cii as shown in (15a).

In (15a), the suffixed verb méyk-i means “to feed.” If this verb is a genuine causative, then the verb stem mek should render the meaning “to be fed.” However, the verb mek does not have such a meaning. Of course, the sentence in (15b) is acceptable in the reading: “Two dogs eat,” but it is unacceptable under the intended reading: “Two dogs are fed,” which is the decausativized counterpart of (15a). Ci-suffixed verbs like méyk-i in (15a) are not derived by causativization in a strict sense. However, the present article also treats the “pseudo-causative” as a causative construction since they are considered to be derived by causative morphology from a diachronic perspective although they are not synchronically productive in Andong Korean.

As shown in Table 3, the morphological form of the same verb stem varies depending on the type of causative situation in which it appears. -Ci is used in the pseudo-causative whereas -Cii is used in the nontypical direct causative, which is taken to be a genuine causative in this article.

3.5 Causative suffixes for vowel stems

In my earlier works (Ito 2015, 2016), I claimed that the two causative suffixes for vowel stems -ywu and -ii are parallel to those for consonant stems -Ci and -Cii, respectively. Section 3.5 will examine the validity of this claim.

Table 4 shows the correspondence between the suffixes for consonant stems and those for vowel stems. Note that the two suffixes for vowel stems -ywu and -ii are in comparison to the two suffixes for consonant stems -Ci and -Cii, respectively.^[10]

As shown in Table 4, it can be confirmed that -ii and -ywu correspond to -Cii and -Ci, respectively, in most cases. Nevertheless, in some cases, -Cii is used for consonant stems, -ywu and -wu are used for the vowel stems rather than -ii. In (16), the suffix -ywu is used for assistive sociative causative where the suffix -ii is expected.

This phenomenon shows that the morpheme -ywu has a wider grammatical function in comparison to -Ci. This is presumably because -ywu has an extra morpheme -*Hwu in its reconstructed form -*Hi-*Hwu whereas the reconstructed from of -Ci is simply -*Hi.

4.1 Causatives marked with -Ci-

In the typical direct causative (Section 3.2.1), -Ci is used. This is because the causer has control over the whole event, including the final result, and, thus, its agentivity is full.

In Section 3.4, we have argued that pseudo-causatives can be analyzed with the same scheme as observed in synchronic causative derivations although pseudo-causative does not undergo causative derivation in a strict sense. Suffixes in pseudo-causatives differ from those in genuine causatives, as shown in Table 3. Pseudo-causatives and nontypical direct causatives have different degrees of causer’s agentivity. This is natural because their causative meanings are not identical. Pseudo-causations are more like typical direct causatives. The causee of ánc-hi “to prepare to cook”or pés-ki “to peel” is inanimate; thus, the causer has full control over the event. The causee of méyk-i “to feed” or nól-li “to make a fool of” – for example, the animal which is fed, or the person who is made a fool of – has no control over the depicted event. For this reason, the causer has full control and hence -Ci is utilized.^[11]

4.2 Causatives marked with -Cii-

Supervision sociative causatives (Section 3.2.3) and permissive direct causatives (Section 3.3.1) are marked with -Cii. In supervision sociative causatives, the causer has only weak agentivity because he or she merely controls the initial stage of the whole event and does not directly execute it but rather supervises the ensuing stages.

Similarly, in permissive direct causatives, the causer’s agentivity is weak since he or she does not directly execute any action but rather permits the resultant situation. Shibatani (1978: 310–21) argues that permissive causatives can be divided into positively permissive (積極許容) and passively permissive (消極許容) causatives. In the former, the causer willfully permits the causee to execute the caused event; in the latter, the causer simply overlooks the execution of the caused event although the causer is responsible for or related to the caused event. Shibatani (ibid.) claims that the causer of positively permissive causatives is agent and that of passively permissive causatives is experiencer. Although the causer of positively permissive causatives is an agent, his or her agentivity is relatively lower than that of factitive (i.e., nonpermissive) causatives, because of the lower directness of execution.

4.3 Causatives marked with either -Ci or -Cii

In Section 3.3.2, we have noted that -Cii is used in bodily/mental change direct causatives, in which the caused event occurs inside the causee’s inner sphere, i.e., body or mind. In such a case, the causee somehow has control over the caused event.

For example, in (17), the action depicted by nwup-héye “to lay down” can be accomplished only when the causee áyay “child” is cooperative with the causer. If the causee struggles against the causer, then the causer will have difficulty or will fail to lay him/her down. This is how the causee of bodily/mental change direct causatives is different from that of typical direct causatives. The causer of typical direct causatives has full control over the caused event. On the other hand, the causer in bodily/mental change direct causatives has only partial control; the causer affects only the external sphere of the causee because the causer cannot reach the causee’s inner sphere. For example, in a situation expressed by the suffixed verb of ingestion meyk-éyey “to make sb eat” in Table 2, a mother can put food into her son’s mouth with a spoon (external sphere), but she cannot directly move his tongue and throat muscles, so that he will swallow the food in his mouth (inner sphere). The causing event of bodily/mental change direct causatives can be executed only outside the causee’s inner sphere. This is because the causer in bodily/mental change direct causatives cannot have full agentivity because he or she may not control the whole event completely. The causee has some control over the caused event, which is not directly executed by the causer. This is the reason why -Cii is used in bodily/mental direct causatives, as shown in (17).

This explanation is good enough for most bodily/mental change direct causatives, but it is insufficient in some cases where the causee is unconscious or inanimate, and so the causer should be able to control the whole event.

It is possible to say that the causee of (18a) áki “baby” unconsciously has some control over its posture even if it is asleep. This control can be considered to be inaccessible to the causer “I.” However, it is impossible for the causee of (18b) inhyéng “doll” to have any control over its posture. This state of affairs might be explained by a kind of personification.

In assistive sociative causatives (Section 3.2.2), the causer helps the causee to execute the caused event. The causer’s agentivity is not as high as in typical direct causatives since he or she does not have full control over the whole event. At the same time, his or her agentivity is not as low as in supervision sociative causatives because he or she controls the depicted event more directly; while the causer in supervision sociative causatives simply supervises, that in assistive sociative causatives directly helps the causee to execute the action depicted by the verb stem. Thus, the causer of assistive sociative causatives also has a mid-level agentivity as does the causer of bodily/mental change direct causatives.

To summarize, causers in bodily/mental change direct causatives and assistive sociative causatives have a mid-level control over the whole event. The agentivity of these two types of causatives is neither as high as that of typical direct causatives nor as low as that of supervision sociative causatives. Therefore, bodily/mental change direct causatives and assistive sociative causatives are expressed by either -Ci or -Cii.

4.4 Causative suffixes for consonant and vowel stems

As argued in Section 3.5, the border of usage between the suffixes for vowel stems -ywu and -ii is not completely identical to that between the suffixes for consonant stems -Ci and -Cii. The set of data found in this study shows that -ywu is more widely used in comparison to -Ci, and, in contrast, -ii is more narrowly used in comparison to -Cii. As shown in Table 4, the suffix -ywu depicts not only typical direct causative and pseudo-causative situations but also bodily/mental change direct causative situations. Whereas the “change in body posture” verb se- “to stand (v.i.)” is suffixed with -ywu, the verbs of “wearing or carrying” (e.g., cwi- “to grasp”) and “cognition” (e.g., po- “to see”) are suffixed with -ii. Thus, it can be safely concluded that causer’s agentivity is higher in “change in body posture” verbs than in “wearing or carrying” and “cognition” verbs. This conclusion seems to be natural because, in events denoted by “change in body posture” verbs, it is simpler and easier for the causer to interfere into the causee’s inner sphere. For instance, to move someone’s arms or legs in order to make him or her stand up involves smaller degrees of complexity, hence, difficulty than to move someone’s body in order to dress him or her.

4.5 Typological analysis

As argued above, the “causative” as a synchronically productive grammatical category can be divided into four groups in Andong dialect: (i) typical direct causatives, where the causer’s agentivity is full, are realized with the shortest form -Ci; (ii) assistive sociative causatives and bodily/mental change direct causatives, where the causer’s agentivity is on an intermediate level, are realized mainly with -Cii and occasionally with -Ci; (iii) supervision sociative causatives and permissive direct causatives, where the causer’s agentivity is low, are realized with the longer form -Cii-; (iv) indirect causatives, where the causer’s agentivity is very low, are realized with the longest from -key ha. Causative types are more finely divided in Andong dialect than in Standard Korean. Thus, this dialect provides a better example that exhibits the continuum from direct to indirect causatives.

Moreover, the system of causative suffixation in Andong dialect corresponds to the typological data. Dixon (2000) argues that the more unmarked a causative is, the more compact form it is encoded with. He also maintains that different degrees of control over the event have much to do with the markedness of causatives: the greater control the causer has, the more unmarked the causative is. In Andong dialect, causatives whose causer has full agentivity (i.e., most unmarked causatives) are denoted with the shortest form, and vice versa – typical direct causatives are expressed with -Ci and indirect causatives are with -key ha. Thus, cases in Andong dialect straightforwardly conform to the widely recognized typological tendency.