Slavic Reflexive Decausative

Abstract

One of the uses of the reflexive marker in Slavic is to signal Decausatives—unagentively interpreted predicates formed from transitive verbs allowing non-volitional Causers as external arguments. The paper proposes an account treating Decausatives in a unified manner with other uses of the reflexive marker in Slavic. Building on the minimal system of reflexive markers presented in previous work, Decausatives are analysed by analogy with genuine Reflexives. The reflexive marker blocks the internal argument, the unbound semantic variable is identified with the external argument at the level of Conceptual Structure. The characteristic Decausative interpretation arises due to the internal argument being a non-volitional Causer rather than an Agent. The present analysis exploits an independently motivated representation of the marker, no additional means or operations are necessary.