Causative verbs and event segmentation in Ewe

Öz This paper seeks to outline and describe the features of Ewe causative verbs and how they encode causative events. It explores the sub-lexical analysis of verbs' meanings since they form the basis of the classification of causal relations that allow us to explore the different imports between sub-events and how these events are structured, and how the participants in the events are related to the description of the event itself acknowledges that establishing causal connections between events and their participants is one the principal means by which we structure our experience of our social and verbs and ther relational environment. Previous typological studies have focussed on event segmentation into syntactic and intonational units, as well as motion events. This study is descriptive in nature and focuses on causative verbs and their relational analysis with the causative events they construe. This paper identifies that just as English and other languages do, causation is at the heart of the majority of the semantic analyses of verbs'meaning relevant to argument realization to involve the causal structure of the events they encode.

___

Agyekum, K. (2004). Causativity in Akan. In M.E.K. Dakubu & E.K. Osam (Eds.), Studies in the Languages of the Volta Basin 2: Proceedings of the Annual Colloquium of the Legon-Trondheim Linguistics Project (pp. 217-227).

Ameka, F. (2007). The Principles of Event Segmentation in Language: The case of Motion Verbs. Language, 83(3), 495-532.

Anonymous Author. (1975; 1976). Nunyamↄ 2A, 2B, 4 and 6. Accra: Bureau of Ghana Languages in Association/ FEP International Private Limited.

Breu, W. (1994). Interactions between Lexical, Temporal and Aspectual Meaning. Studies in Language, Vol. 18, pp. 23–44.

Croft, W. (2012). Verbs: Aspect and Causal Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Duthie, A. S. (1996). Introducing Ewe Linguistic Patterns: A Textbook of Phonology, Grammar, and Semantics. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.

Essegbey, J. (1999). Inherent Complement Verbs Revisited: Towards an Understanding of Argument Structure in Ewe. Germany: Max Planck Institute.

Evans, V. & Green, M. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Fillmore, C. J. (1977). The Case for Case Reopened. In P. Cole (Ed.), Syntax and Semantics 8: Grammatical Relations (pp. 59-81). New York: Academic Press.

Gisborne, N. (2010). The Event Structure of Perception Verbs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grimshaw, J. (1990). Argument Structure. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Huang, S., & I-wen Su, L. (2005). Iconicity as Evidenced in Saisiyat Linguistic Coding of Causative Events. Oceanic Linguistics, 44(2), 341-356.

Kulikov, L. I. (2001). Causatives. In H. Martin, K. Ekkehard, O. Wulf & R. Wolfgang (Eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals. An International Handbook, Vol. 2, pp. 886-898. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Langacker, R. W. (1995). Cognitive Grammar. Descriptive Application, Vol. 2. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Levin, B. (2007). The Lexical Semantics of Verbs 1: Introduction and Causal Approaches to Lexical Semantic Representation. Lecture Notes, Course LSA. 113P, Stanford University.

Levin, B., & Hovav, M.R. (2005). Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lemmens, M. (2015). Cognitive Semantics. In N. Riemer (Ed.) Routledge Handbook of Semantics, London/New York: Routledge, 90-105.

Nyaku, K. F. (1973). Amedzro Etↄ̃lia. Accra: The Bureau of Ghana Languages in association with FEP International Private Limited.

Obianim, S. J. (1990). Eʋe Kↄnuwo. Accra: Sedco Publishing Limited.

Pustejovsky, J. (1991). The Syntax of Event Structure. Cognition, Vol. 41, pp. 47-81.

Singh, M. (1992). An Event-Based Analysis of Causatives. Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society.

Stefanowitsch, A. (2001). Constructing Causation: A Construction Grammar Approach to Analytic Causatives. Ph.D Thesis. Ann Arbor: Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company.

Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics: Concept Structuring Systems, Vol. 1. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Van Valin, R., & LaPolla, R. J. (1997). Syntax: Structure, Function and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wunderlich, D. (1997). Cause and the Structure of Verbs. Linguistic Inquiry, 28(1), 27–68.