영어 사동구문의 의미적 연속성

Abstract

This paper attempts to account fir three kinds of periphrastic causative constructions in English in terms of two semantic factors. One is whether the causer exerts an influence directly on the causer or on the event which the causee participates in. The other is whether the causer gets directly or physically involved in the execution of the caused event or indirectly instigates the causee to execute the caused event. This notion of directness/indirectness has been mainly adopted to distinguish between lexical causatives and periphrastic causatives. Recently Shibatani and Pardeshi have proposed that there is an intermediate category between direct and indirect causations and that these different categories form a continuous semantic space.In this paper, adopting Shibatani and Pardeshi's account, 1 propose that the semantic continuum of directness can account fir subtle meaning differences among various forms of periphrastic causatives in English. Although there is no definite answer, we speculate on what kind of constituent structure would appropriately represent the semantic differences of causative constructions. We also observe that the notion can shed light on the diachronic development of English causatives. These accounts attempt to provide a comprehensive view of English causative constructions from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives.