In general linguistics, a labile verb (or ergative / diffused / ambivalent verb) is a verb that undergoes causative alternation; that is, it can be used both transitively and intransitively, with the requirement that the direct object of its transitive use corresponds to the subject of its intransitive use,Kulikov, Leonid & Nikolaos Lavidas. 2014. Introduction: Typology of labile verbs. Linguistics 52(4). 871–877. as in "I ring the bell" and "The bell rings." Labile verbs are a prominent feature of English, and also occur in many other languages.Letuchiy, Alexander. 2009. Towards a typology of labile verbs: Lability vs. derivation. In Alexandre Arkhipov & Patience Epps (eds.), New challenges in typology: Transcending the borders and refining the distinctions, 223–244. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter This behavior can be seen as evidence that the distribution of verb classes in that language does not depend on transitivity. In this respect, it is a phenomenon that is common to both Active languages and Ergative languages. In such languages it is often not possible to distinguish between transitive and intransitive verbs in terms of word formation or morphology. They have the same morphological form or suffix regardless of whether they are transitive or intransitive, and the transitivity or intransitivity of the verb is determined by the context.
When causatively alternating verbs are used transitively they are called causatives since, in the transitive use of the verb, the subject is causing the action denoted by the intransitive version. When causatively alternating verbs are used intransitively, they are referred to as anticausatives or inchoatives because the intransitive variant describes a situation in which the theme participant (in this case "the bell") undergoes a change of state, becoming, for example, "rung".Schäfer, Florian. 2009. "The Causative Alternation". Language and Linguistics Compass 3.2: 641. Print.Coppock, Elizabeth. "The Logical and Empirical Foundations of Baker's Paradox." Diss. Standford, 2008. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Web. 2 Oct. 2013. p. 20.Levin, Beth. "Causative Alternation". English Verb Classes and Alternations. Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 1993. 26–27. Print.
Terminology The terminology in general linguistics is not stable yet. Labile verbs can also be called "S=O-ambitransitive" (following R. M. W. Dixon's usage), or "ergative", following Lyons's influential textbook from 1968.Dixon, R. M. W. 1987. Studies in ergativity: Introduction. Lingua 71(1). 1–16. However, the term "ergative verb" has also been used for unaccusative verbs,Keyser, Samuel Jay & Roeper, Thomas. 1984. "On the middle and ergative constructions in English". Linguistic Inquiry 15(3). 381–416. and in most other contexts, it is used for ergative constructions.
In English Most English verbs can be used intransitively, but ordinarily this does not change the role of the subject; consider, for example, "He ate the soup" (transitive) and "He ate" (intransitive), where the only difference is that the latter does not specify what was eaten. By contrast, with a labile verb the role of the subject changes; consider "it broke the window" (transitive) and "the window broke" (intransitive).
Labile verbs can be divided into several categories: Verbs suggesting a change of state – break, burst, form, heal, melt, tear, transform Verbs of cooking – bake, boil, cook, fry Verbs of movement – move, shake, sweep, turn, walk Verbs involving vehicles – drive, fly, reverse, run, sail
Some of these can be used intransitively in either sense: "I'm cooking the pasta" is similar to both "The pasta is cooking" (as an ergative verb) and "I'm cooking", although it is clearly more informative than either.
Unlike a passive verb, a nominalization, an infinitive, or a gerund, which allow the agent to be either excluded or included, the intransitive form of a labile verb normally requires the agent to be excluded:
"The window was broken" or "The window was broken by the burglar." "[...] to break the window [...]" or "[...] for the burglar to break the window [...]" "[...] the breaking of the window [...]" or "[...] the burglar's breaking of the window [...]" "The window broke" but not "The window broke by the burglar."
The intransitive form of a labile verb can suggest that there is no agent. With some non-labile verbs, this can be achieved using the reflexive voice: He solved the problem becomes The problem was solved or The problem solved itself.
The first use of the passive voice can indicate the lack of an agent, but it can also be used when a specific agent is unknown. For example, the phrases "John broke the window, or maybe Jack did – at any rate, the window broke" and "John solved the problem, or maybe Jack did – at any rate, the problem was solved" both have quite naturally understandable meanings, though they are slightly idiomatic.
The second use of the reflexive voice indicates that the subject of the sentence is the causative agent; the phrase "John solved the problem, or maybe Jack did – at any rate, the problem solved itself" is literally self-contradictory, though idiomatic usage does not always follow this prescription. Accordingly, some grammarians would consider both "The window broke" and "The problem solved itself" to be examples of a distinct voice, the middle voice.
The labile verb enables not only the omission of the outside agent, but also the implication that the affected party is somehow causing the action. This can be done neutrally when the affected party can be considered an institution or corporate entity and the individual member responsible for the action is unimportant, for example "the shop closed for the day". It can also avoid assigning blame when journalists are sympathetic to a particular causative agent, as in "Eight factories have closed this year."
Another example Example of the causative alternation with the English verb 'break':
The general structure of the causative and anticausative variants of the causative alternation in English:
The causative alternation is a transitivity alternation. The verb “break” demonstrates causative alternation because it can alternate between transitive (in the causative) and intransitive use (in the anticausative) and the transitive alternate "John broke the vase" indicates the cause of the intransitive alternative "The vase broke." In other words, the transitive use denotes that it was John that caused the vase to break. The causative alternative has an external argument ("John"), which bears the theta role agent which is not present in the intransitive alternative. The object of the causative alternative ("the vase") bears the same thematic role of theme as the subject of the anticausative alternative (also "the vase").
Principal characteristics Cross-linguistically, the verbs that participate in the causative alternation are anticausatives which denote movement or a change of state or degree.
Anticausatives
Under one possible and fairly common analysis (called the unaccusative hypothesis), unaccusatives and unergatives form the two subclasses of intransitive verbs.Belletti, Adriana. "The Case of Unaccusatives". Linguistic Inquiry 19.1 (1988): 1.Cinque, Guglielmo. "Ergative adjectives and the Lexicalist Hypothesis". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 1–40. Unaccusative verbs cannot assign case to their deep-structure object which bears the theme/patient thematic role; because of this, the object moves to the subject position in the surface form in order to obtain case in accordance with Burzio's generalization. The movement of "the book" from object position to subject position is traced in example (3a). Therefore, unaccusative verbs take a semantic theme or patient subject. On the other hand, unergative verbs take a semantic agent or initiator subject.
Most unaccusative verbs participate in the causative alternation. The unaccusatives that do causatively alternate are anticausative verbs (like "break") which make up a subclass of unaccusative verbs called alternating unaccusatives. The other subclass of unaccusative verbs, pure unaccusatives, consists of all other unaccusatives (like "fall") that do not take part in causative alternation.
Though some unaccusative verbs can undergo causative alternation (anticausatives), it is never the case that an unergative (like "laugh") can.
Change of state verbs In various languages, it is seen that the verbs participating in the causative alternation are verbs that denote movement or a change of state or degree. However, not all change of state verbs are anticausatives and therefore, not all change of state verbs participate in the causative alternation. For instance, a change of state verb like 'bloom' does not show causative alternation as it is a pure unaccusative. It is possible to say that "The cactus bloomed", but it is ungrammatical to say that "The warm weather bloomed the cactus."
Theoretical approaches
The general consensus in the field is that there is a derivational relationship between verbs undergoing the causative alternation that share the same lexical entry. From this it follows that there is uncertainty surrounding which form, the intransitive or the transitive, is the base from which the other is derived. Another matter of debate is whether the derivation takes place at the syntactic or lexical level.
With reference to these assumptions, syntactic and lexicalist accounts have been proposed. These approaches account for intransitive, transitive and common base approaches.
The intransitive base approaches, also known as causativization, state that the transitive variant is derived from the intransitive variant (the causative is derived from the anticausative) by adding one argument, that is an agent. The transitive base approaches, also known as decausativization, propose that the intransitive form is derived from the transitive by deleting one argument that is the agent. Common base approaches suggest that both the transitive and the intransitive forms are formulated from a common base.
Lexicalist
According to the intransitive base/causativization approach, the intransitive form is the base and a causative predicate is added to the Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) in order to make the verb transitive. In the following example (7), the basic LCS, "The stick broke" is embedded under a cause predicate, in this case "Katherine", to form the derived LCS "Katherine broke the stick."
In (7a), "x" is the variable ("stick"), and the CHANGE operator refers to the change-of-state ("break"). In the anticausative ("the stick broke") "the stick" undergoes the change "break", namely, the stick breaks. Moreover, the "y" variable refers to "Katherine" and the CAUSE operator refers to the cause of the change ("break"). In the causative, ("Katherine broke the stick"), it is "Katherine" who causes the action "break", and is therefore the cause operator.
The transitive/decausativation approach, assumes a lexical operation which performs precisely the opposite of the causativization approach discussed above.
In this approach, according to the following rule, the intransitive/anticausative form is derived from the transitive/causative form by deleting the cause predicate from the LCS. In example (8) below, the LCS is "Katherine broke the stick" and the cause predicate "Katherine" is deleted.
Syntactic