Sociative causative in South American languages

Abstract

In earlier research, the sociative causative has been considered a subcategory of a prototypical causative and not a category of its own. In the sociative causative the causer both initiates the event and participates in it, unlike in the prototypical causative in which the causer is only the initiator. It has been proposed that the causer can participate in the event either by acting together with the causee, helping the causee, or supervising the causee. The sociative causative can be marked on the predicate by using a specific sociative causative marker or it can be a reading of a prototypical causative construction or a reading of an applicative. It has been proposed in the previous literature that the sociative causative is an areal feature of the South American indigenous languages, and 26 languages were previously known to have sociative causative. In addition to these 26 languages, a genealogically balanced sampling method was applied and four more languages with sociative causative function were found. The 30 languages were analyzed formally and semantically. The analysis shows that the sociative causative usually describes the type of causation in which the causer is a co-actor with the causee or the causer helps the causee. The supervision type of sociative causation, however, occurred rarely. The sociative causative tends to be used with intransitive verbs that express motion or physical activity.