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All languages have ways to express causation but differ in the means. Most, if not all, languages have specific or lexical causative forms (such as English rise → raise, lie → lay, sit → set). Some languages also have morphological devices (such as inflection) that change verbs into their causative forms or change adjectives into verbs of ...
In general linguistics, a labile verb (or ergative verb) is a verb that undergoes causative alternation; that is, it can be used both transitively and intransitively, with the requirement that the direct object of its transitive use corresponds to the subject of its intransitive use, [1] as in "I ring the bell" and "The bell rings."
A famous example for lexical ambiguity is the following sentence: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.", meaning "When flies fly behind flies, then flies fly in pursuit of flies." [40] [circular reference] It takes advantage of some German nouns and corresponding verbs being homonymous. While not noticeable ...
In English, many anticausatives are of the class of "alternating ambitransitive verbs", where the alternation between transitive and intransitive forms produces a change of the position of the patient role (the transitive form has a patientive direct object, and this becomes the patientive subject in the intransitive).
Causality is an influence by which one event, process, state, or object (a cause) contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an effect) where the cause is at least partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is at least partly dependent on the cause. [1]
'The Schmied smith hämmert hammers das the Metall metal flach. flat.' Der Schmied hämmert das Metall flach. 'The smith hammers the metal flat.' Verbal resultatives This sort of resultative is a grammatical aspect construction that indicates the result state of the event denoted by the verb. English does not have a productive resultative construction. It is widely accepted that the be ...
In West Greenlandic, the causative (sometimes called the conjunctive) is used to construct subordinate clauses that express cause or time (when in the past) (Fortescue 1990, p.314). [2] It is used to mean "because", "since" or "when", sometimes also "that". The causative is used also in main clauses to imply an underlying cause. [3]
In the second sentence, do-support is required because idiomatic Modern English does not allow forms like *She laughs not. The verb have, in the sense of possession, is sometimes negated thus: I haven't the foggiest idea. Most combinations of auxiliary/copula plus not have a contracted form ending in suffix -n't, such as isn't, won't, etc.