Abstract

This thesis reexamines causative constructions found in Marshallese; an Austronesian language spoken in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Both Bender, Capelle & Pagotto (2016) and Willson (2008) hint that lexical aspect is a necessary predictor of causative behaviors in Marshallese, but offer no explanations. The primary focus of this thesis is to examine lexical aspect's influence on causative derivations. This project shows that Marshallese stative verbs display two distinct causative constructions: stative causatives and causative abstract nouns. The Marshallese causative prefix, ka-, tends to exhibit common crosslinguistic patterns of causative constructions as laid out by Dixon and Aikenvald (2000). However, contra Dixon and Aikenvald's typology, Willson (2008) suggests that the causative prefix in stative causative constructions in Marshallese does not license an additional argument (undergoer). This is argued to be different than non-stative causative constructions. Through data collection from six native Marshallese speakers and further analysis based on lexical aspect features (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997), this thesis provides a refreshed perspective on the morphosyntactic differences of Marshallese causative constructions. The findings confirm that stative causative constructions do license an additional undergoer argument while causative abstract nouns, another causative construction derived from stative verbs, do not. These findings are typologically significant as they showcase the complexity of causative constructions.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; Linguistics

Rights

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