On Causative Verbs and Derived Nominals in English

Author(s): Carlota S. Smith

Source: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter, 1972), pp. 136-138
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177696 .
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136

SQUIBS

AND

DISCUSSION

all are ill-formed as a consequence of violating (ib). Nonetheless it may be that the degree of deviation lessens from
(a) to (c). This could be explained by postulating a
hierarchy in which derived constituents are more or less
fully S-like, with tensed clauses most S-like, subjectpossessing infinitives and gerunds next, and subjectless
gerunds and infinitives still less, with possibly a distinction
making gerunds less S-like than infinitives. Such a hierarchy
is plausible, although I do not know how to describe it
formally. Such distinctions seem to play a role in restricting
the possibilities of extracting constituents from different
kinds of clauses.4

References
Bresnan, J. (0 971) "On Sentence Stress and Syntactic
Transformations," Language47, 257-28I.
Chomsky, N. (to appear) OnInterpreting
the World,Pantheon
Books, New York.
Emonds, J. (I970) Root and StructurePreservingTransformations, unpublished Doctoral dissertation, MIT,
Cambridge, Mass.
Postal, P. M. (to appear) "Some Rules That Are Not Successive Cyclic," LinguisticInquiry.
Ross, J. R. (I967) Constraints
on Variablesin Syntax,unpublished Doctoral dissertation,MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
4 Chomsky (to appear) advances some proposals which would
constrain extraction from tensed clauses in contrast to nontensed infinitival and gerundial clauses. In particular, he claims that a constituent
can be extracted from a tensed clause only if it is in complementizer
position, while this is not the case with nontensed clauses. While there
can be no doubt, I think, that there is an important core of truth in
distinguishing tensed from nontensed clauses with respect to their
greater resistance to extraction, and while Chomsky's proposal draws
many significant contrasts, the exact formulation seems untenable to me
on various grounds. In particular, it requires that unbounded rules like
those involved in the movement of question and relative forms operate
on every cycle, or, in the terminology of Postal (to appear) successive
cyclically.But as I argue there, this cannot be the case.

ON

CAUSATIVE VERBS AND

DERIVED

NOMINALS IN

ENGLISH

CarlotaS. Smith,
Universityof Texas
at Austin

A number of verbs in English occur both transitively and

intransitively, e.g. turn (John turnedthe wheel; The wheel
turned).These verbs are often referred to as causatives.1 In
1 Most verbs of this type have a causative meaning. There are,
however, verbs with causative meaning that do not occur transitively
and intransitively, for instance, kill. There are also verbs that occur as
transitives and intransitives but without causative meaning, e.g. read,
frighten (The bookreadswell; Maryfrightenseasily).
A serious definition and full treatment of causatives is lacking. For
the limited purposes of this note, I refer to verbs as causative if they

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SQUIBS

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DISCUSSION

his recent discussion of derived nominals, Chomsky points

out that some causative verbs have derived nominals
associated with the intransitive form only. He cites as an
example the verb grow (cf. The corn'sgrowthbut not * The
farmer'sgrowthof the corn). Chomsky states that in general
causative verbs do not have derived nominals associated
with their transitive forms.
There are many counterexamples to this claim: convert,
explode,divide, accelerate,expand, repeat,neutralize,conclude,
unify, and so on at length; thus, The priest's conversionof
Robertand Robert'sconversion.
Note that all of the preceding
counterexamples share a morphological property: their
nominals are formed with suffixes of Latin origin, usually
the suffix -tion.
Examination of a significant number of causative
verbs2 leads to the conclusion that an adequate grammar
of English must allow for both transitive and intransitive
derived nominals. There are almost as many causative
verbs that have both as there are causatives that have only
intransitive nominals. Among several hundred verbs, there
is less than io% difference in frequency between the two
types.3
Whether or not a verb has a transitivenominal depends
on how the nominal is formed. If a causative verb takes a
nominalizing suffix of Latin origin (-tion, -al, -ment), then
it has both transitive and intransitive derived nominals
(type L). If a causative verb does not take such a nominalizing suffix, then it occurs only intransitively (and quite
idiosyncratically) in derived nominals (the Anglo-Saxon
type).
As illustration, consider the following pairs of causative
verbs:
AS
change
turn
stop
dunk
kill
increase
raise
end

L
alter
rotate
terminate
submerge
assassinate
augment
escalate
conclude

occur transitively and intransitively, with substantially the same lexical

items as transitive objects and intransitive subjects, as the sentences given
above with turnexemplify.
2 The entries in Webster'sNew CollegiateDictionary, I953 edition,
were examined for this study.
3 A more recent dictionary, especially a dictionary with many
technical words, would undoubtedly contain more causatives that have
both kinds of derived nominals. Most technical terms are morphologically
of this type, e.g. oxidize, acidulate.

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138

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AND

DISCUSSION

The AS verbs do not take Latin nominalizing suffixes,

and have only intransitive derived nominals. The L verbs
take Latin nominalizing suffixes and have both types of
derived nominals. In general, verbs of Anglo-Saxon origin
do not take Latin nominal suffixes,and verbs of Latin origin
do. There are some exceptions: increase,for instance, of
Latin origin, has a 0 nominal suflix.
Actually the example grow-growth
is exceptional. I have
found only 3 other causative verbs that have nominals with
the suffix -th: warm,widen,lengthen.Most causative verbs of
type AS have the e nominal suffix: ring, turn,change,raise,
and so forth. The nominal suffix that occurs fairly often on
derived nominals of type AS is -ness: we have The light's
dimnessbut not *John'sdimnessof thelights.This suffix occurs
with about I /5 of the verbs of this type. Note that both -th
and -nessare AS suffixes.
Thus the grammar must distinguish at least two classes
of "causative" verbs: those that do and do not have transitive derived nominals. Evidently, either the lexicalist
position or the transformational derivation of causatives
must be given up.
References

Chomsky,N.

(1970)

"Remarkson Nominalization,"in

Grammar,R. A.
Readingsin English Transformational
Jacobs and P. S. Rosenbaum, eds., Ginn & Co.,
Waltham, Mass.

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