Causative/Inchoative in Morphology 1 Mercedes Tubino-Blanco Table of Contents 1. Verbal alternations and the Causative/Inchoative alternation 1.1. Argument structure and verbal alternations 1.2. The Causative/Inchoative alternation 1.3. A universal phenomenon 1.4. Other causativity alternations: The Causative alternation 2. Lexical-semantic questions 2.1. Unaccusativity of the intransitive variant 2.2. Verbs involved in the alternation 2.3. Direct and indirect causation 3. Morphological questions 3.1. Morphological coding 3.2. The thematic direction of the alternation 3.3. The reflexive clitic as an anticausative marker 4. Theoretical approaches 4.1. Lexical approaches 4.2. Syntactic approaches 5. Remaining challenges Further reading References Summary The Causative/Inchoative alternation involves pairs of verbs, one of which is causative and the other non-causative syntactically and semantically (e.g., John broke the window vs. The window broke). In its causative use, an alternating verb is used transitively and understood as externally caused. When used non-causatively, the verb is intransitive and interpreted as spontaneous. The alternation typically exhibits an affected argument (i.e., a Theme) in both intransitive and transitive uses, whereas the transitive use also involves a Causer that brings about the event. Although they are often volitional agents (e.g., John broke the window with a stone), external causers may also be non-volitional causers (e.g., The earthquake broke the windows) and instruments (e.g., The hammer broke the window). Morphologically, languages exhibit different patterns reflecting the alternation, even intralinguistically. In languages like English, alternations are not morphologically coded, but they are in most languages. Languages like Hindi commonly mark causative (or transitive) alternations by means of different mechanisms, such as internal vowel changes or causative morphology. In many European languages, a subset of alternating verbs may exhibit an uncoded alternation, but most alternating verbs mark anticausativization with a reflexive-like clitic. In Yaqui (Uto-Aztecan), different patterns are associated with different verbal roots. The alternation may be uncoded, equipollent (i.e., both alternating forms are coded), and anticausative. My gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions. 1 1