Hi, this is Robert. I had to talk to a related topic in my final oral exam. It was about the distinction of prepositions and particles in Einglish. In the case of non-idiomatic complex verbs these 'particle verbs' were always supposed to be compositional and hence causative, resultative, telic and the like. Besides the Incorpotation Approach you've already mentioned there comes the dutch tradition to my mind to analyse complex verbs with a causative, resultative, telic meaning as small-clauses. Here the approaches of Kayne (Kayne, Richard S. (1984): Connectedness and Binary Branching), den Dikken (den Dikken, Marcel (1995): Particles - on the syntax of verb particle, triadic and causative constructions) and especially for German Particle Verbs Zeller (Zeller, Jochen (2001): Particle Verbs and Local Domains) have to be mentioned. Hope this helps! Bye Robert

Hi, there is plenty of theories around - assuming I got your question right: I interpret it as a question on how come there are pairs like (i) The captain sank the boat vs. (ii) The boat sank, where, in general, people agree on (i) being the Causative verb and (ii) being Inchoative/Intransitive/Anticaustive and perhaps other labels. So, the question is usually asked: which of these verbs is'the basic' one, the one from which the other is derived. Notice, crucially, that languages differ in the marking on the pattern. So, while in some languages (like Slavic and Romance) there is a marking on the Inchoative verb (cf. the reflexive marker SE), other languages mark the causative member. So, naturally, there are views that claim that the Causative member is the basic one (I just want to mention Pestsky (1995) as a proponent of such a view), on the other hand, there are people who claim that the Inchoative version is the basic one and the Causative is derived.

And, finally, there are theories according to which neither is derived from the other, but the members of the pair are related in other way: usually set as a difference in their syntax. Alexiadou is an example of such a theory.

A very enlightening summary could be found in Haspelmath (1993) (and some subsequent work) and a concise newer overview in Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (2004) and Alexiadou (2010) - Alexiadou has been working on the topic and a list of her publications is available (with some papers to be downlaoded) here http://ifla.uni-stuttgart.de/index.php?article_id=48 And, of course, literature cited there.

As an overview, it might do. Hope it helps. Best, Lucie

Alexiadou, A. (2010): On the morphosyntax of (anti-)causative verbs. Ms. University of Stuttgart.

Alexiadou, A. & E. Anagnostopoulou. 2004. Voice morphology in the causative-inchoative Alternation: evidence for a non unified structural analysis of unaccusatives. In A. Alexiadou, E. Anagnostopoulou, and M. Everaert (eds.) The Unaccusativity puzzle. Oxford University Press.

Haspelmath, M. 1993. More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. In Comrie B. and M. Polinsky (eds.) Causatives and Transitivity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pesetsky, D. (1995): Zero Syntax. MIT Press, Mass.

Hi, thank you John.