Causative constructions in Amguema Chukchi

The article examines causativization strategies in Amguema Chukchi. It focuses primarily on the morphological causative marked by the prefix r- (-n-), which can be derived freely from patientive and experiential intransitive predicates. Only certain classes of agentive intransitive predicates, such as change-of-posture and ingestive verbs, form the proper causative. With most other agentive intransitive verbs, the causative derivative receives an applicative reading. Verbs of dressing require coreferentiality between the Agent and the Patient; in their causative derivatives, these two semantic participants are expressed by two syntactic arguments. The morphological causative is also used to provide “transitivity concord” for the verb paa- ‘to cease’ when it agrees with the object of the embedded infinitival clause. This verb lacks subjective-objective conjugation forms and is transitivized through causativization. A similar function is observed with verbs ‘to do for the nth time’, which are formed from ordinal numerals. The analytic causative, consisting of the ‑jɣut form and the light verb rət- / -nt- ‘to have’, is specialized for expressing speech causation. Unlike the morphological causative, the analytic causative is not implicative, that is, it does not entail that the caused situation takes place. Another non-implicative causative construction involves the “lexical affix” te-…‑ŋ attached to verbs already marked with the causative marker r- (-n-). The Chukchi data are relevant for the study of causative-applicative syncretism and other aspects of the typology of causative constructions.