The paper considers morphology, morphosyntax and semantics of causative formation in Agul, a Lezgic language of Southern Daghestan (Russia). In Agul, the two most frequent causative patterns, periphrastic and compound causatives, apparently share one source of grammaticalization. The former are combinations of 'do' with the infinitive of the lexical verb, while the latter put them together as two bound stems. However, semantically 'do'-compounds belong with non-productive causatives (labile verbs and lexical causatives) and are opposed to fully productive periphrastic causatives. All non-productive causativesonly available for intransitive verbs-have parallel periphrastic 'do'-causatives, the distinction between the parallel forms conveys the semantic contrast of direct vs. indirect causation. The paper makes an attempt at decomposing these typological categories into simpler components (intentionality, physical interaction, event structure), and provides a detailed semantic analysis of labile verbs and semantically irregular causatives. Periphrastic causatives are peculiar in their own way: they may introduce locative or ergative Causee, the choice depending on the degree of the Causee's control over the caused situation. Basing on this morphosyntactic variability, we argue that periphrastic causatives are intermediate between bi-and monoclausal constructions. * This article is based on two papers read in Kazan at LENCA II conference in June, 2004 and in Moscow at the Workshop on verbal derivation (the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences) in May, 2005. A shorter Russian version has been published as (Daniel, Maisak & Merdanova 2008). We are grateful to Ekaterina Lyutikova and Alexander Letuchiy for a discussion of the manuscript; and to the editors of this volume for their important comments. ** The author's work was supported by the Program for Fundamental Studies (Higher School of Economics). 1. Solmaz Merdanova lived in Huppuq' as a child and is trilingual in Agul, Lezgian and Russian. She is the source of all elicited examples. Examples that are not marked as elicited are natural utterances coming from the Agul Electronic Corpus of spontaneous narratives and dialogues collected in 2004-2008 in Huppuq' and Makhachkala by Dmitry Ganenkov, Timur Maisak and Solmaz Merdanova. 'When children are teasing him, doing all sorts of things to him, he throws his stick, makes them run away. ' (2) Intransitive (two arguments), elicited malla nesredin.a pːačːah gada.ji-q Mullah Nasreddin(erg) king boy-post quχ.a-s q'.u-ne believe.ipf-inf do.pf-pft 'Mullah Nasreddin made so that the king believed the boy. ' (e.g. confirmed the boy's words) (3) Intransitive (experiencer verbs), elicited baw.a-s ag w .a-s q'.u-ne-wa wun jarħun? mother-dat see.ipf-inf do.pf-pft-q you.sg(erg) wound 'Why, you let your mother see your wound?!' (the addressee was not supposed to let his/her mother see the wound in order not to make her upset) (4) Transitive …uč.i alčat.u-na sara-tː.i-w self(erg) set.on.pf-cvb other-nmlz-apud ...
