1.1 Mbyá resultatives and valency alternations

This paper explores a point of cross-linguistic variation in the formation of resultative predicates, through a detailed study of resultatives in Mbyá Guaraní, a Tupí-Guaraní language spoken in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. I use the term resultatives to refer to stative predicates that entail the existence of a causing event,¹ such as adjectival passives in English (Wasow 1977; Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1986). Using the label adjectival passive would be misleading in Mbyá, since there is no participial morphology in the language and resultatives are formally distinct from passives.

My starting point is the observation that Mbyá resultatives have a more restricted distribution than English adjectival passives. In English, adjectival passives can be derived not only from inchoative verbs like break but also from transitive causatives that do not participate in labile alternations, like bury:

German and Greek are similar to English in this respect.

In Mbyá on the other hand, resultatives can only be derived from inchoative verbs. As I will discuss in more detail in section 3, resultative predicates are derived by adding the suffix -kue or its voiced allomorph -gue to an inchoative verb stem.³ Resultative derivation is ungrammatical not only with derived and underived transitive causatives, as illustrated in (4b) and (5b), but also with causative stems whose valency has been reduced with the reflexive/passive prefix je-/nhe-, as illustrated in (4c) and (5c), to be compared with the grammatical reflexives/passives in (4d)/(5d):

Faced with these different distributions, one may be tempted to conclude that the stativizing operators that derive resultative predicates in English and Mbyá have different properties. To the contrary, I will argue that the difference between the two languages is located not in the properties of their stativizing operators, but rather in the properties of the verbs to which they apply. More precisely, I propose that the restricted distribution of Mbyá resultatives is due to an interaction between two factors: (i) that they are, as target state resultatives, incompatible with heads that introduce agents or causers and (ii) that roots of underived transitive causatives are more tightly associated with their external arguments in Mbyá than in English, German or Greek.

Regarding the first of these two factors, I argue following much previous work (see Rapp 1996; Schlüker 2005; Gehrke 2011; Meltzer-Asscher 2011; McIntyre 2013; Alexiadou et al. 2015) that target state resultatives are incompatible with the expression of agents or causers that are not participants in the result state. Following Alexiadou et al. (2015), this is interpreted as evidence of the incompatibility of target stativizers with agentive or causative Voice heads.

Regarding the second factor, it will be shown that all alternations involving external arguments must be marked morphosyntactically in Mbyá. Moreover, we will see that anticausative and labile alternations are unattested. Building on these observations, I will argue that the roots of all underived transitive causatives in Mbyá must be realized in syntactic frames that introduce an external argument. In the analytical framework adopted in this paper, this means that these roots must co-occur with an agent or causer Voice head.

The incompatibility of Mbyá resultatives with transitive causative verbs then follows from the incompatibility of target state resultatives with agent or causer Voice heads, together with the fact that these verbs require the presence of such a head in their syntactic frame, either lexically or through morphological causativization.

In languages like English, German or Greek, on the other hand, target state resultatives can be derived from non-alternating transitive causative verbs like bury in (2), because the roots of these verbs do not require the presence of agent or causer Voice head in their syntactic frame, despite the fact that they do not participate in labile alternations. More precisely, we will see in section 4 that target state resultative formation with transitive causatives in these languages is only excluded with verbs that select agents as their external arguments, as argued by Alexiadou et al. (2015) and Anagnostopoulou (2017).

In sum, I will argue that the difference between Mbyá on the one hand and better studied languages like English, German or Greek on the other hand is located not in the properties of their stativizers, but in the more stringent selectional restrictions that Mbyá roots impose on their argument structure.

The contributions of the paper are threefold. First, it contributes to the cross-linguistic study of resultative predicates, by providing a fine grained description and analysis of the grammar of resultatives in Mbyá. Second, it reveals a point of variation in the association between roots and external-argument introducing Voice heads across languages: it will be argued that Mbyá differs from English, German and Greek in the range of roots that are required to co-occur with an agent or causer Voice head. Finally, the paper presents new empirical support for the analysis of causative/inchoative alternations as Voice alternations of Kratzer (2005) and Alexiadou et al. (2006) and the related observation that resultant and target stativizers differ with respect to their syntactic height relative to Voice heads (Alexiadou et al. 2015; Anagnostopoulou 2017).

1.2 Theoretical assumptions

My analysis is grounded in constructivist theories of argument structure, which spring from the seminal work of Hale and Keyser (2002), and are represented by studies such as Ramchand (2008), Harley (2012) and Marantz (2013). In this tradition, the event structure and argument structure of verbs is built syntactically, through the combinations of roots with functional heads that enrich their event structure and introduce their arguments.

On the semantic side, I adopt a Neo-Davidsonian analysis of event descriptions, with full syntactic decomposition. In particular, I will assume that verb roots introduce predicates of events or states, and arguments are introduced by separate thematic heads. For a defence of thematic separation in syntax, see Borer (2003; 2005). For a review of semantic arguments in favour of thematic decomposition, see Williams (2015: Chapter 9).

Finally, I will adopt a realizational analysis of morphology, according to which syntax acts as a generative engine that builds abstract representations that are then spelled out phonologically. In section 5, I will argue that restrictions on the distribution of Mbyá resultatives are elegantly captured in a spanning theory, which holds that sequences of non-terminal nodes in a linearized syntactic structure can be realized as single morphemes, see in particular Haugen and Siddiqi (2016).

1.3 Ethics and data sources

Mbyá examples, judgments of grammaticality and truth-value were elicited by the author with two native speakers of Mbyá from Paraguay and one speaker living in the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in July 2017 and July 2018. The author sought the informed consent of the consultants prior to elicitation. The three consultants authorized the author to publish the contents of these elicitation sessions in scientific communications. This study also relies on Robert Dooley’s (2015; 2016) description of Mbyá. Dooley (2015; 2016) provided a translation of his examples into Brazilian Portuguese. I have (re-)glossed these examples and I have provided an English translation. Unless indicated otherwise, all Mbyá examples provided in the paper were elicited by the author.

1.4 Caveat lector

Mbyá is spoken on a large territory that includes the Misiones province in Argentina, parts of Paraguay and several states in Brazil. Therefore, it goes without saying that regional variation is expected, and I can only claim that the description of resultatives presented in this paper reflects the usage of the three consultants I worked with. However, it is worth noting that this description is consistent with Dooley’s (2015; 2016) own description of Mbyá resultatives, which is based mainly on data collected in the Rio das Cobras community, in the state of Paraná in Brazil.

1.5 Structure of the paper

Sections 2 and 3 present the core Mbyá data to be analyzed. Section 2 focuses on valency alternations, and section 3 on resultative predicates. I argue in section 3 that Mbyá resultatives denote properties of target states rather than of resultant states. In section 4, I compare the distributions of target state resultatives in Mbyá, English, German and Greek, and I argue that the restricted distribution observed in Mbyá is due to the more stringent constraints that Mbyá roots impose on their syntactic frame, in combination with the cross-linguistically attested incompatibility of target stativizers with agent or causer Voice heads. Section 5 presents an implementation of the analysis in a realizational theory of morphology with insertion at non-terminal nodes, and compares it to an implementation in Distributed Morphology. Section 6 concludes.

2.1 Split intransitivity in Mbyá

In order to discuss valency alternations in Mbyá, it is important to give an overview of agreement in the language. Mbyá verbs are uninflected for tense and aspect (Dooley 2015: §12.3). Bare verbs are interpreted with a non-future reference time, and are underspecified for viewpoint aspect.⁴ By contrast, subjects and/or objects are cross-referenced on the verb, following a split-S system. Two paradigms of cross-reference markers are used, which I refer to as class A and class B markers (see Table 1).

Some intransitive verbs cross-reference their subject with class A markers, others with class B markers. Intransitive verbs that use class A markers are known as active, while those that use class B markers are known as inactive. Transitive verbs cross-reference either their subject or their object, with the exception of combinations of first person subjects and second person objects, which are cross-referenced with the portmanteau prefix ro-.⁵ With all other combinations of persons, a person hierarchy is used to determine which argument is cross-referenced (where “n > m” stands for “n wins over m”):

Transitive subjects are cross-referenced with class A markers, while objects are cross-referenced with class B markers. With two third person arguments (e.g. third person subject and third person object), the subject is cross-referenced.⁶ In other configurations, the highest argument on the hierarchy is cross-referenced. The following constructed examples illustrate:

The nature of the cross-referencing system of Guaraní languages has been the subject of some theoretical debates, see in particular Velázquez-Castillo (2002a) and Zubizarreta & Pancheva (2017a) on Paraguayan Guaraní.

One fact that bears mentioning in this section is that the distinction between intransitive verbs that select class A markers and those that select class B markers is orthogonal to the distinction between intransitive verbs that support resultative derivations and those that don’t. The following examples show that resultative predicates can be derived from either class of verbs:

Consequently, the opposition between class A and class B markers will not play a direct role in my analysis of Mbyá resultatives.

2.2 Stative/inchoative alternations

In Mbyá, stative verbs may alternate between their stative interpretation and a dynamic, inchoative interpretation without morphological marking. This is illustrated in (9) and (10), where adverb choice in context forces a stative versus dynamic interpretation of the verb, respectively:

2.3 Causative alternations and causative verbs

Alternations between intransitive and causative uses of a verb are marked by the causative prefix mbo- and its allomorph mo-:⁷⁸

Causativization with mo-/mbo- targets all intransitive predicates, including unergative predicates:

There are also non-alternating causative verbs in Mbyá, as illustrated by the verbs juka and aya:

As examples (15b) and (15d) illustrate, verbs stems like juka and aya have no intransitive uses. In particular, they do not participate in labile alternations.

Finally, it should be mentioned that mo-/mbo- is not the only causative marker attested in Mbyá. Transitive verbs are causativized by the suffix -uka, and sociative causatives (cf. Shibatani & Pardeshi 2002; Guillaume & Rose 2010) are built with the prefix (gu)ero-, see Dooley (2015: §13.2). Since causatives of transitives and sociative causatives are not directly relevant to the argument that will be developed in the rest of the paper, I will not discuss them.

2.4 Valency reduction with je-/nhe-

The valency of transitive verbs may be reduced with the prefix je- and its nasal allomorph nhe-, which I will argue has both reflexive and passive uses (see Velázquez-Castillo 2002a for a brief description of this prefix in Paraguayan Guaraní). The reflexive use of je-/nhe- is the most frequent according to Dooley (2015: §13.2), and is illustrated in (16). In this example, the agent of the killing must be the subject:

But je- is also attested in what may initially appear to be marked anti-causative constructions:

However, such constructions differ crucially from inchoative verbs in implying the existence of an external argument. A first piece of evidence of this contrast is provided by the impossibility to deny the existence of an agent or causer with passivized causatives, as opposed to inchoatives:⁹

Another piece of evidence is provided by instrument modification, which is allowed with passivized causatives but not with inchoatives:

Not only do (20c) and (21c) imply the existence of an external argument, it is also understood that this argument is an agent, rather than the door or the road itself: clearly, the door cannot be the participant manipulating the stick in (20c), and if it were the understood external argument in (19b), negating the existence of an agent with avave (‘nobody’) should be coherent. In sum, it appears that the reduced causatives of Mbyá cannot be analyzed as reflexive verbs with a semantically impoverished effector external argument, as proposed by Koontz-Garboden (2009) for marked anti-causatives. In these respects, non-reflexive causatives whose valency was reduced with je-/nhe- are more similar to English passives, which also imply the existence of an external argument, than to marked anti-causatives. French SE-anticausatives, for instance, are consistent with negating the existence of an external argument, and license neither instrument modifiers nor agentive prepositional phrases:

I will not offer a detailed analysis of the structure and interpretation of valency reduction with je-/nhe-, nor will I explain the preference for its reflexive interpretation, since these questions are orthogonal to our main argument. What matters to the analysis of resultative formation is that transitive verbs prefixed with je-/nhe- introduce an external argument, which is either existentially quantified or bound through reflexivization. In both cases, these verb forms contrast with inchoatives, which lack an external argument altogether.

2.5 There are no anticausative or labile alternations in Mbyá

We have seen that causativization in Mbyá is marked by the prefix mo-/mbo-, the suffix -uka or the sociative causative prefix (gue)ro-. The prefix je-/nhe- is used as a reflexive or passive marker. Two other valency increasing or decreasing markers that we will not discuss here are the reciprocal prefix jo-/nho-, and the impersonal voice marker -a, which binds the external argument of a transitive or intransitive verb without promoting its internal argument (Dooley 2015: §13.2).

The demotion of a direct object to an oblique argument is not marked by derivational morphology, but is marked syntactically by the use of postpositions:

Given this rich inventory of valency changing markers, we may ask ourselves whether there are any unmarked valency alternations in the language. With respect to external argument alternations, the answer is clearly negative. As Dooley observes in his grammatical sketch of Mbyá, alternations that affect the external argument are marked morphologically (Dooley 2015: §13.2).

The situation is more complex with alternations involving internal arguments, which are optional with some verbs:

I conclude that, with the possible exception of optional internal arguments, every operation that increases or decreases the valency of a verb is marked either by derivational morphology, or by the use of adpositions. In particular, all operations that introduce or bind an external argument are marked by derivational morphology.

An important consequence of this state of affairs is that Mbyá lacks any form of anticausative or labile alternation. We saw that valency reduction with je-/nhe- should be analyzed as a form of passivization or reflexivization. So-called labile alternations, covert alternations between inchoative and transitive causative uses of a verb, are also unattested, as is middle voice. In these respects, Mbyá differs from English, in which labile alternations are attested, as well as German and Greek, in which both labile alternations and marked anticausatives are attested (Alexiadou et al. 2006). In section 4, I will argue that this property of Mbyá is closely linked to the restricted distribution of resultatives in the language.

3.1 Morphological makeup

Resultative predicates are formed by attaching the suffix -kue/-gue to the verb root. Both active and inactive verbs are attested in resultatives. The following examples illustrate the predicative use of resultatives:

Mbyá resultatives also have attributive uses:

We now come to the observation at the centre of this paper, namely that the resultative suffix -kue/-gue cannot attach to causative verbs, whether they are derived causatives or underived transitive causatives. This is illustrated in examples (28) and (29):

Resultative formation is also unacceptable with causative verbs whose valency has been reduced with the prefix je-/nhe-:

Note that resultative formation is not acceptable with all intransitive verbs. Resultatives formed from activity verbs are unacceptable, as illustrated in (31):

Furthermore, resultatives are not attested with all inchoative verbs:

The following resultatives were identified in Dooley’s (2016) lexicon. Note that all base verbs in the list are intransitive in Mbyá, with the apparent exception of monda, to which we come back below:

My consultants judged that these resultatives are well formed. They also accepted the following ones. Again, all base verbs in the list are intransitive:

All verbs in these lists but monda have inchoative uses. Indeed, in his lexicon, Dooley (2016: 92) observes that the formation of resultatives with -kue/-gue is restricted to intransitive verbs, with the exception of the form mondakue (‘stolen’), which my consultants also accepted:

It should be noted that monda is not a direct transitive verb, but rather an intransitive verb with an oblique theme argument:

Still, monda differs from the other predicates listed in (33) and (34) insofar as its subject is not a theme but an agent, and constitutes an apparent exception to the generalization that Mbyá resultatives may only be derived from inchoative verbs. In section 5, I will argue that the compatibility of monda with resultative derivation is due to the irregular character of this verb, and that this exception actually brings further support to the proposed analysis of the restricted distribution of Mbyá resultatives.

Before I close this section, I would like to point out that the Guaraní suffix -kue/-gue is also attested as nominal temporal marker (Tonhauser 2006; 2007; Thomas 2014):

However, uses of -kue/-gue as a nominal tense and as a resultative marker have different distributions and interpretations. As a past temporal marker, -kue/-gue cannot be suffixed to verbs that have not been nominalized. If the verb is nominalized, -kue/-gue can attach to it regardless of its event structure. In (38a), the bare verb o-o is compatible with a past tense interpretation. Attaching the temporal marker -kue to the verb in (38b) is ungrammatical. In (38c), the temporal marker attaches to the nominalizer va’e, which rescues the sentence:

By contrast, the resultative use of -kue/-gue is restricted to inchoative verbs, and does not require nominalization. Since the present paper is only concerned with the resultative use of -kue/-gue, and its use as a temporal marker has a different distribution, the question of the unification of resultative and past uses will be left to future research.

3.2 Semantic properties of Mbyá resultatives

Embick (2004) observes that English adjectival passives, unlike pure state predicates, cannot be used in complements of verbs of creation:

Since adjectival passives describe states that result from a previous causing event, asserting that an entity was in a result state at its time of creation is incoherent. Applying the same diagnostics in Mbyá confirms that inchoative verbs suffixed with -kue/-gue denote properties of result states, rather than properties of pure states:

One may further ask what kind of result state is described by Mbyá resultatives. In a seminal study, Kratzer (2000) observed that German and English adjectival passives do not form a homogeneous class. Kratzer identified two kinds of adjectival passives in these languages, depending on the nature of the state and its relation to the causing event. Resultant state adjectival passives denote mere states of events having culminated, which Kratzer models as properties of times that follow the culmination of an event. Target state adjectival passives, on the other hand, describe semantically richer states that result from the culmination of an event, but may not persist indefinitely. In English and German, target state adjectival passives that do not describe permanent states are compatible with modification by still (in German: immer noch), unlike resultant state adjectival passives, as illustrated by (42a) vs (42b), respectively:

The distinction between resultant states and target states was initially formulated by Parsons (1990), who offers an elegant description of the difference between these two kinds of states:

Following this intuition, Kratzer (2000) proposes that target state adjectival passives are derived by applying a stativizer to a relation between events and states, while resultant state adjectival passives are derived by using a stativizer that is essentially a perfect operator, which maps a property of events to a property of times:

Kratzer’s denotations for the two stativizers are given in (45). I have renamed the target and resultant stativizers RES_TARGET and RES_RESULT, respectively:

Coming back to Mbyá, all the resultatives that my consultants accepted and that do not describe permanent states are compatible with modification by teri (‘still’):

We must of course make allowance for resultative predicates that are incompatible with teri because they denote permanent states:¹¹

Finally, the incompatibility of -kue/-gue resultatives with activity predicates (cf. example (31)) is also explained if -kue/-gue denotes a target stativizer, which takes relations between events and states as arguments. Since activity predicates denote properties of events without an associated target state, they will not be able to combine with -kue/-gue.

I conclude that -kue/-gue resultatives denote target states rather than resultant states.

3.3 Structure of Mbyá resultatives

My analysis of the structure of Mbyá resultatives builds on the constructivist analysis of causativization of Schäfer (2007) and Alexiadou et al. (2006; 2015). Verbs are decomposed into an uncategorized root together with a number of functional projections:

Following Marantz (1997), roots are category neutral. A little v head categorizes them as verbal. Following earlier proposals by Kratzer (1996), Hale & Keiser (2002) and Pylkkännen (2002; 2008), external arguments are introduced by a Voice head.

In addition, Schäfer (2007) and Alexiadou et al. (2015) analyze causative/inchoative alternations as Voice alternations. Inchoative verbs (i.e. unmarked anticausatives) consist of a Voice-less vP. In causative verbs, an agent or causer argument is introduced by an additional Voice head:

This analysis follows a tradition of decomposing causative verbs into a state denoting root, and an operator that introduces a causing event (see among many others Lakoff 1965; McCawley 1968; Dowty 1979; von Stechow 1996; Harley 2008; 2012). In addition, Pylkkänen (2002; 2008) argued based on the analysis of Finnish desiderative causatives and Japanese adversative causatives that causing events may be introduced independently from causer arguments. She concludes that causative relations between eventualities and agents of causing events are introduced by different heads, which in the present framework are identified with little v and Voice, respectively. Further extending this line of reasoning, Kratzer (2005) observes that Pylkkänen’s dissociation of causing events from causer arguments makes it possible to analyze causative alternations as Voice alternations. Kratzer argues that causation should be analyzed as a relation between a causing event and an event or state that the culmination of this event brings about. In this perspective, one may assume that inchoative predicates are causative too:

Finally, Schäfer (2007) and Alexiadou et al. (2015) provide syntactic arguments for the presence of a causative little v head in inchoatives, in the absence of external argument introducing head.

Building on this analysis of causative structures, Alexiadou et al. (2015) argue that resultative operators differ with respect to their height relative to the Voice head. In resultant state adjectival passives, the resultative head (which I will refer to as RES) is introduced above Voice, while in target state adjectival passives, it is introduced below the Voice head. In resultant state adjectival passives, Voice may introduce an agent or a causer argument. On the other hand, when Voice is present in target state adjectival passives, it introduces as an external argument a participant¹² in the target state, which accounts for the incompatibility of target state adjectival passives with modifiers that relate to agents or causers, with the exception of agents and causers that participate in the result state (see McIntyre 2013 and section 4.1). The class of target state adjectival passives is not itself syntactically homogeneous, since target state participles in English and German as well as target state interpretations of Greek participles formed with the suffix -menos are argued to embed a full vP, while Greek target state participles formed with the suffix -tos only embed a root or √P:

In this perspective, if Mbyá resultatives describe target states, we expect that they should occur lower than Voice, or more generally lower than the point where external arguments are introduced in the syntactic structure. This is indeed confirmed by the fact that Mbyá resultatives do not license agent/causer related modifiers, as illustrated below with instrumental modifiers. In this respect, resultatives pattern with inchoative verbs, as opposed to causative and passive verbs:

Resultatives that include a v layer entail the existence of a causing event. Evidence that Mbyá resultatives are of this type was already presented in (41), where it was shown that they are unacceptable in complements of verbs of creation.

In sum, resultative predicates formed with -kue/-gue denote a target state, which entails the existence of a causing event. The resultative head is introduced above little v, and is incompatible with an agent/causer Voice head. This suggests the following structure for Mbyá resultatives:

In this structure, the stative root √DRY is adjoined to the v_CAUS head, which introduces a causing event. The thematic head θ_THEME introduces the holder of the state, in the complement domain of little v. The little vP denotes a relation between states of the theme being dry and their causing event. The resultative head RES_TARGET maps these relations to a property of target states of such events.

In the syntactic representation in (54), it is assumed that the root denotes a state. This is appropriate for verbs like piru, which can be used as pure stative predicates. However, some inchoative verbs only have a dynamic use. This is the case for instance with pẽ (‘break’). How can we capture the dynamic nature of such verbs? Following Embick (2009), I propose that the roots of predicates of caused states denote a property of events and must co-occur with a “proxy” predicate of states. In inchoative structures, the root √BREAK denotes a property of events that is adjoined to a causative little v head, and specifies a manner of causing. The caused state is denoted by an abstract predicate ST that is c-commanded by little v:¹³

Given these assumptions, we may represent the structure of resultatives derived from predicates of caused states as follows:

The compositional interpretation of these structures is discussed in the appendix.

4.1 Target stativizers and Voice

Following previous studies by Rapp (1996), Schlüker (2005), Gehrke (2011), Meltzer-Asscher (2011) and McIntyre (2013), Alexiadou et al. (2015) note that English, Greek and German target state adjectival passives fail to license agent/causer related modifiers, unless the agent they refer to is present in the target state, or the adverb modifies that state directly. The following contrasts illustrate this fact:

The target state adjectival passives in (57a) and (58a) are incompatible with agentive by-phrases. In (57b) and (58b), agentive modification is acceptable. McIntyre argues that the relevant contrast lies in the relation of the agent to the target state. While the agents of (57a) and (58a) only participate in the causing event, those of (57b) and (58b) are interpreted as participants in the target state. As McIntyre puts it, they are “responsible for continuing the state expressed by the participle” or are somehow essential to the characterization of the state. It appears then that the arguments introduced in by-phrases in (57b) and (58b) are arguments of the target state, and that these examples are consistent with the generalization that target state adjectival passives are incompatible with agent oriented modifiers that relate to the causing event rather than its result state. This generalization is further supported by the incompatibility of target state adjectival passives with instrument modifiers and agent oriented adverbs. The following examples from Greek illustrate:

Based on these observations and additional modification tests, Alexiadou et al. (2015) conclude that target stativizers are introduced below Voice, and block the introduction of agent/causer Voice.

In order to explain the incompatibility of target stativizers with agent/causer Voice, Anagnostopoulou (2017; 2018) proposes that target state but not resultant state participles represent outcomes of scalar changes. She further argues that verbs that lexicalize scalar changes must express change along a single dimension. The presence of Voice is then argued to be blocked in target state adjectival passives because it would lead to interactions between the agent and the theme that would render the change too complex.

In the next subsection, I will argue that the incompatibility of target stativizers with agent/causer Voice explains the restricted distribution of resultatives in Mbyá.

4.2 Explaining the restricted distribution of Mbyá resultatives

Mbyá target state resultatives are unacceptable with all transitive verbs. This contrasts with target state adjectival passives in English and German, which can be derived from a subset of non-alternating transitive causatives, as illustrated by the following examples:

The fact that these adjectival passives are compatible with modification by still suggests that they are interpreted as target state resultatives. Importantly, the transitive verb stems from which they are derived lack inchoative alternants:

In German, the native speakers I consulted accept sich-forms of these verbs only to the extent that internal causation is conceivable. To illustrate, one speaker commented that (64b) is acceptable “if I imagine a building that has a function of ejecting all residents in the case of a threat”. Another speaker observed that (64a) suggests that “the tires have a built-in inflation mechanism (much like life jackets in an airplane).” One speaker judged that, as a consequence of these implications, (64b) and (64d) are odd. Another one judged that (64c) and (64d) are odd, for the same reasons.

I conclude that these examples, to the extent that they are acceptable, are interpreted reflexively, and are therefore semantically transitive.

This discussion shows that target state resultatives are compatible with some transitive verbs that do not participate in causative alternations in English and German. Why then are resultatives incompatible with transitive causatives in Mbyá? We saw in section 3 that Mbyá lacks any form of anticausative or labile alternations. Furthermore, the only operations that reduce the valency of transitive verbs preserve external argument entailments: both reflexive and passive verbs entail the existence of an external argument, and there appears to be no middle voice in the language. In the present analytical framework, this suggests that the roots of lexically causative verbs in Mbyá are only ever attested in syntactic frames that include an agent or causer Voice head, which introduces an external argument in the semantic representation of the verb. I conclude that these roots are lexically required to occur in such syntactic frames. This entails that these verbs will be incompatible with resultative derivation with the suffix -kue/-gue, since this suffix is a target stativizer and as such is incompatible with agent or causer Voice. The same reasoning also explains the ungrammaticality of resultatives derived from morphological causatives, under the assumption that the causative prefix mo-/mbo- introduces a thematic Voice head.

By contrast, given the compatibility of the English and German transitive causatives with target state derivation in (61), we must conclude that the roots of these verbs may occur in syntactic frames that lack agent or causer Voice, despite the fact that these verbs do not have inchoative alternants.

Note that a similar analysis of restrictions on the distribution of target state resultatives was already proposed in Greek by Anagnostopoulou (2017), who observed that verbs of manner of killing and verbs of creation, as well as a subset of verbs with manner entailments, cannot form target state adjectival passives:

Anagnostopoulou observes that the causative verbs that cannot form target state adjectival passives require an agent as an external argument. By contrast, at least some verbs of external causation that are not strictly agentive appear to form acceptable target state adjectival passives in Greek, as illustrated by the following examples (the judgments in (69) were provided by a native speaker of Greek):

In the present framework, verbs that require an agent as external argument must be realized in a frame that includes an agentive Voice head, which explains their incompatibility with target stativizers. By contrast, the roots of non-agentive causative verbs that are compatible with target state adjectival passives must be able to occur in syntactic frames that lack an agent or causer Voice head, even if they fail to participate in labile alternations.

In sum, the crucial difference between Mbyá and languages like English, German or Greek with respect to the distribution of target state resultatives appears to be range of roots that are required to co-occur with an agent or causer Voice head. In Mbyá, all roots of transitive causatives are subject to this requirement. In English, German and Greek, at least some roots of non-alternating transitive causative verbs must be able to occur in frames that do not include agent or causer Voice.

4.3 Coda

I have argued that all roots of transitive lexical causatives in Mbyá require the presence of an agent or causer Voice head in their syntactic frame. This, in combination with the incompatibility of target state resultatives with such heads, explains the restricted distribution of resultatives in this language. What is still unclear at this point is the nature of the association between Voice and the roots of causative verbs in Mbyá. In the next section, I sketch two alternative analyses of this dependency. The first one builds on the assumption that phonological exponents may spell out linearized sequences of terminal nodes, and proposes that exponents of roots of transitive lexical causatives in Mbyá spell out sequences of heads that include the root itself and its associated Voice head. The second adopts a more classical approach to Vocabulary Insertion, and posits that these roots bear a feature that must be checked by a Voice head.

5.1 Spelling out syntactic frames with post-linearization spanning

An elegant way of capturing the requirement that roots of transitive causatives impose on the presence of a Voice head is to assume that the exponent of these verbs spell out a chunk of structure that includes both heads. Theories of Vocabulary Insertion at non-terminal nodes are well suited to implement this idea. In this subsection, I will sketch an analysis of the morphological realization of Mbyá verbs using the theory of post-linearization spanning of Haugen & Siddiqi (2016).

An important motivation of realizational models of morphology with non-terminal insertion is the avoidance of the proliferation of null exponents and post-syntactic readjustment operations like fusion and fission. Null exponents and readjustment operations are invoked in realizational models of morphology when a piece of syntactic structure that contains multiple terminal nodes is spelled out by a single exponent. This arises for instance in the analysis of irregular past forms of English verb tenses like hit or sang (Halle & Marantz 1993). The former may be analyzed by positing a null allomorph of the past tense, whose use is triggered by the presence of the root √HIT:

An analysis of sang will involve not only positing a null exponent for the past tense in the context of √SING, but also invoking a phonological readjustment rule that will change the nucleus of the exponent of the root in the context of the past tense.

By contrast, post-linearization spanning treats hit and sang as exponents of adjacent sequences of heads after linearization:¹⁶

(71)	a.	Syntactic structure:	[ T[+past] [vP v √HIT ] ]
	b.	Linearized sequence of heads:
	c.	Phonological realization:

(72)	a.	Syntactic structure:	[ T[+past] [vP v √SING ] ]
	b.	Linearized sequence of heads:
	c.	Phonological realization:

The realization of sequences of heads by a single Vocabulary Item is subject to the two following principles:

Note that in post-linearization spanning, a Vocabulary Item may provide an exponent for a series of heads, without matching all the heads in the series. This is similar to the insertion of underspecified Vocabulary Items under bundles of features in Distributed Morphology. In view of this fact, the discussion that follows will distinguish exponence (the phonological realization of a series of heads) from feature matching. In the graphical representation of Vocabulary Insertion that are used in this section, e.g. (72b)–(72c), horizontal curly brackets represent exponence, rather than feature matching.

Keeping this in mind, let us now illustrate how the two principles in (73) and (74) interact in the realization of the past form of sing. This process involves a competition between the irregular form sang and the regular form *singed, which exploits the following set of Vocabulary Items:

Two options compete for the phonological realization (i.e. exponence) of the linearized sequence of heads. For ease of reading, feature matching between Vocabulary Items and sequences of heads are indicated through boldface, while exponence is indicated with curly brackets:

(76)	a.	Syntactic structure:	[ T[+past] [vP v √SING ] ]
	b.	Linearized sequence of heads:
	c.	Phonological realization:

(77)	a.	Syntactic structure:	[ T[+past] [vP v √SING ] ]
	b.	Linearized sequence of heads:
	c.	Phonological realization:

While both options satisfy the Post-linearization Contiguous Morpheme Insertion Principle, Minimize Exponence favours sang over singed, since the former realizes (i.e. matches) the same number of features (√SING and T_[+past]) with fewer morphemes. Note that, given the inventory of Vocabulary Items in (75), the little v head does not qualify as realized in either option, in the matching sense of realization. Nevertheless, this head is still spelled out by sang in (76c) and by sing in (77c).

It is worthwhile to discuss the process that leads to the realization of the past form of hit, since this will illustrate an important feature of post-linearization spanning, namely the use of homophony in the analysis of morphological irregularities. Both the present non-third person form of this verb and its past tense form are realized as hit. The Vocabulary Item in (78b) may be used to spell out the former. However, spelling out the past form of this verb with this Vocabulary Item is less optimal than using the regular form *hitted, since (78b) does not match the past tense feature. Consequently, we must introduce a homophone of hit in (78c), in order to account for the irregular realization of the verb in the past tense.

(79)	a.	Syntactic structure:	[ T[+past] [vP v √HIT ] ]
	b.	Linearized sequence of heads:
	c.	Phonological realization:

(80)	a.	Syntactic structure:	[ T[+past] [vP v √HIT ] ]
	b.	Linearized sequence of heads:
	c.	Phonological realization:

(81)	a.	Syntactic structure:	[ T[+past] [vP v √HIT ] ]
	b.	Linearized sequence of heads:
	c.	Phonological realization:

While the appeal to root homophony in post-linearization spanning may be criticized by some, it is embraced by Haugen & Siddiqui (2016), who argue that this approach is no more stipulative than positing a contextually conditioned zero-allomorph of the past tense, and reflects some degree of arbitrariness in the history of these irregular forms.

Let us now consider how post-linearization spanning may be used to provide a model of the morphological realization of Mbyá resultatives and valency alternations. In a realizational morphological framework, the most delicate aspect of Mbyá verb morphology to model is the lack of labile alternations. Indeed, we must make sure that (i) exponents of inchoative verbs cannot be used to spell out transitive structures, and (ii) exponents of transitive causatives cannot be used to spell out inchoative structures. In Distributed Morphology, both problems would arise if null exponents were used indiscriminately to spell out little v heads and Voice. Remembering that the verb piru (‘dry’) is restricted to intransitive inchoative or stative uses, while aty (‘bury’) is restricted to transitive uses, consider the following inventory of Vocabulary Items:

Unrestricted use of null exponents for v_CAUS and Voice predicts, incorrectly, that the exponent piru may realize a causative verb, and that the exponent aty may realize an inchoative verb:

(83)	a.	Syntactic structure:17
	b.	Phonological realization:	*∅Voice – ∅v – piru

(84)	a.	Syntactic structure:
	b.	Phonological realization:	*∅v – aty

These cases of over-generation are elegantly avoided using post-linearization spanning. One may restrict the use of aty to causative structures by assuming that this exponent spells out a sequence of heads that includes both the root and Voice:

(85)	a.	Voice, vCAUS, √BURY	↔	aty
	b.	Syntactic structure:
	c.	Linearizarion:
	d.	Phonological realization:

Because the Vocabulary Item in (85a) is specified for Voice, it cannot spell out a sequence that does not include this head.

The impossibility to spell out transitive structures with piru is also easily accounted for with Minimize Exponence, given the availability of the alternative realization mombiru. To illustrate, the exponent piru defined in (86a) spells out all three features present in (87), but it matches only the root, while the combination of mo- and piru (mombiru) in (88) matches all three features:

(87)	a.	Syntactic structure:
	b.	Linearization:
	c.	Phonological realization:

(88)	a.	Syntactic structure:
	b.	Linearization:
	c.	Phonological realization:

Minimize Exponence favours (88) over (87), since the causative morpheme mo- matches the Voice and v_CAUS heads, which are left unmatched in (87). Note that this analysis relies on an auxiliary assumption, which is that there is no Vocabulary Item that spells out Voice with a null exponent. This however is a consequence of a design feature of post-linearization spanning, which eschews the use of null exponents altogether.

The analysis also captures covert event structure alternations between stative and inchoative uses of piru and other stative roots, under the assumption that little v heads lack independent exponents in the language (which is supported by the lack of overt marking of alternations between stative and dynamic interpretations of verbs, as well as by the lack of overt marking of the opposition between inchoative and process verbs, all these oppositions being encoded in flavours of little v in the proposed analysis):

(89)	a.	√DRY	↔	piru
	b.	Syntactic structure:
	c.	Linearization:
	d.	Phonological realization:

In sum, this analysis captures dependencies between the roots of lexical causatives and Voice lexically, by encoding in Vocabulary Items the information that the exponents of these roots also spell out Voice. In this perspective, the incompatibility of roots of underived transitive causatives with resultative derivation receives the same explanation as the impossibility of these roots to occur in inchoative verb frames. Namely, since both structures lack agent or causer Voice, the only Vocabulary Item that may spell out the root is overspecified. Compare (92) to the grammatical resultative in (91):

(91)	a.	vCAUS, √BREAK	↔  pẽ
	b.	Syntactic structure:
	c.	Linearization:
	d.	Phonological realization:

(92)	a.	Voice, vCAUS, √BURY	↔  aty
	b.	Syntactic structure:
	c.	Linearization:
	d.	Phonological realization:

5.2 Remarks on thieving

It was observed in section 3.1 that the verb monda (‘steal’) is compatible with resultative -kue/-gue, which appears to contradict the generalization that resultative -kue/-gue only combines with inchoative predicates. I believe that the source of this exception lies in the irregular character of the predicate monda itself. This is a dynamic predicate which requires the presence of an agent argument and a theme that undergoes a transfer of possession. As such, monda falls under Tsunoda’s (1981) category of predicates of effective action. The fact that the theme of this verb is realized as an oblique argument is somewhat surprising, since effective action predicates tend to be realized as transitive verbs cross-linguistically (Tsunoda 1985; Malchukov 2005; Grimm 2011). Even more surprising is the fact that the agent of monda is cross-referenced with a class B inactive marker. Velázquez-Castillo (2012a) observed that arguments that initiate a process of change (in this case a transfer of possession) are marked as actors in Paraguayan Guaraní. Mbyá is similar to Paraguayan Guaraní in this respect (see Dooley 2015: §10.1). We would therefore expect the agent of monda to be cross-referenced with a class A marker. This is indeed how the agent of dynamic uses of monda is cross-referenced in Paraguayan Guaraní (see Jover Peralta & Osuna 1950; Guasch & Ortiz 2008).

Given this state of affairs, I would like to suggest that monda has an argument structure that is not characteristic of agentive verbs, and that this property is reflected both in its unexpected cross-referencing pattern and in its compatibility with resultative derivation. More precisely, I will argue that because of its peculiar argument structure, monda differs from other agentive verbs in Mbyá in not requiring the presence of a Voice head in its syntactic frame. My argument will rely on Zubizarreta & Pancheva’s (2017a; b) theory of cross-referencing in Paraguayan Guaraní, which I apply to Mbyá.

Zubizarreta & Pancheva (2017a; b) analyze the cross-referencing system of Paraguayan Guaraní transitive verbs as a direct/inverse system, class A markers being used to cross-reference subjects in the direct order, while class B markers are used to cross-reference objects in the indirect order. In addition, Zubizarreta and Pancheva argue that while class A markers are agreement prefixes, class B 1^st and 2^nd person markers are pronouns. In the simplest case of indirect order, they are object pronouns that are promoted to a position of adjunction to the inflection head I, via the edge of vP, as illustrated by the following example from Paraguayan Guaraní:¹⁸

Zubizarreta and Pancheva observe that object cross-reference markers in the inverse order may originate as possessors of incorporated noun phrases. This analysis is supported by the formal identity of possessive pronouns with class B cross-reference markers, as illustrated in (94a)–(94b):

In (94b), the 1^st person cross-reference marker is argued to be base generated as a possessor in the specifier of the incorporated nP che=rova, before undergoing cyclic movement to I.

Zubizarreta and Pancheva extend this analysis to class B 1^st and 2^nd person cross-reference markers of so-called “triform-verbs”, which they argue originate as possessors of an nP incorporated into little v. Consider for instance the verb che=rasẽ in (95). This verb consists of the nP asẽ (‘cry’) incorporated into a light v. Its class B 1^st person cross-reference marker originates as a possessor of the incorporated nP, and is cyclically moved to a position of adjunction to the I head:

I propose that the Mbyá verb monda (‘steal’) has a structure similar to that of intransitive tri-form verbs, where the incorporated phrase is a possessive DP, rather than an nP:

In this example, the stem xemonda is derived by incorporating an event denoting DP interpreted as ‘my theft’ into a light v. Its 1^st person cross-reference marker originates as a possessor (nP_[1SG]) in the specifier of DP, and is cyclically moved until it ends up as a D head adjoined to I. The theme is introduced as a post-positional argument of the verb. The introduction of the agent as a possessor explains its unexpected cross-referencing with a class B marker.

Moving on to the interpretation of (96b), we can assume that the possessor nP_[1SG] is base-generated in a thematic position. More precisely, the root √THEFT denotes a property of events of stealing, and the possessive head D_POS introduces introduces nP_[1SG] as the agent of these events (cf. John’s theft of the $1,000).

Crucially, while we argued that agent-introducing Voice is always spelled out together with the root of transitive causative verbs, this generalization need not apply to the relation between nominal roots and D_POS. If √THEFT can be spelled out independently of D_POS, it should be possible for the target stativizer -kue to combine with the stem monda, as illustrated in (97), repeated from (35), and in (98):

(98)	a.	√THEFT	↔	monda
	b.	Syntactic structure:		[ RESTARGET [vP [nP [n √THEFT n ] ST ] vCAUS ] ]
	c.	Linearization:
	d.	Phonological realization:

In sum, analyzing monda as an incorporated DP explains its irregular inflection class and argument structure. In addition, the hypothesis that its agent is not introduced by Voice but rather by a possessive D_POS head explains why monda is not subject to the requirement that all roots of lexical transitive causatives in Mbyá should be spelled out together with Voice.

5.3 Cross-linguistic Variation

The analysis sketched in the previous subsection accounts for the lack of target resultatives derived from transitive causatives in Mbyá. However, we haven’t yet explained why such alternations are attested in English and similar languages. For alternating verbs like dry, the answer is simple. The Vocabulary Item that is used to spell out the root of such verbs is underspecified for Voice. Since causative alternations are unmarked in English, the same Vocabulary Item can be used to spell out the root in an inchoative or a transitive frame, the former being compatible with resultative formation:

(99)	a.	√DRY	↔	dry
	b.	Syntactic structure:
	c.	Linearization:
	d.	Phonological realization:

(100)	a.	√DRY	↔	dry
	b.	Syntactic structure:
	c.	Linearization:
	d.	Phonological realization:

The situation is more complicated with transitive causatives that do not alternate, like bury. Because these verbs can form target state adjectival passives, the Vocabulary Items that realize their roots must not be specified for agent or causer Voice:

However, this cannot be the whole story, since the Vocabulary Item in (101) could then be used to spell out the root √BURY in an inchoative frame, which we know is unattested.

In order to solve this puzzle, I propose that the constraints that prevent the realization of these roots in inchoative frames are not lexical, but pragmatic. I will now sketch an analysis along these lines, by building on an earlier proposal by Rappaport Hovav (2014).

Following Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995), Rappaport Hovav (2014) observes that some causative verbs like clear only alternate with particular choices of theme argument:

Rappaport Hovav argues that the availability of the inchoative form with clear type verbs is not due to lexical restrictions, but to pragmatic constraints which favour the more informative expression of the cause argument:

If the cause of a change of state is always relevant, speakers should use the more informative transitive verb form, unless they have additional reasons not to do so. One such reason would be that the speaker assumes there is no external cause. In Gricean terms, using the transitive form would then violate the maxim of quality (Grice 1975). In this scenario, the inchoative form is preferred:

Note that Rappaport Hovav (2014) does not intend her pragmatic analysis to apply to verbs like kill and destroy. Since these verbs never alternate, she argues that they are lexically associated with an external argument. However, given the availability of target state adjectival passives with non-agentive transitive causatives like bury, I believe that a lexical analysis of the lack of alternation of bury-type verbs is not tenable. Instead, I suggest that Rappaport Hovav’s pragmatic analysis of causative alternations with clear-type verbs can be extended to non-alternating non-agentive transitive causatives. While the Vocabulary Items that spell out the roots of these verbs are by themselves compatible with inchoative frames, transitive frames are preferred due to their greater informativity. The challenge that we face is to explain why this preference rules out the inchoative use of bury type verbs, while it can be overridden by contextual factors for break and clear type verbs.

I suggest that the unacceptability of inchoative alternants with bury type verbs can be attributed to an obligatory implicature. Let us assume that the inchoative form of lexical causatives competes with its passive alternative:

(106b) is more informative than (106a), since it entails the existence of an external cause that lead to the body being buried. Everything else being equal, an utterance of (106a) will therefore lead to an implicature that the speaker is not in a position to assert (106b). This implicature, however, conflicts with the common knowledge that events of burying have external causes. Indeed, bury is similar to kill and destroy insofar as these verbs denote non-spontaneous events, i.e. events that are unlikely to occur without the intervention of a external cause (Haspelmath 1993). In this respect, bury differs from verbs like break and clear, which are compatible with internal as well as external causes (Harley & Noyer 2000), and will therefore trigger non-contradictory implicatures.

Note that this analysis requires the computation of the implicature of (106a) to be mandatory and blind to common knowledge. Indeed, if the implicature could be cancelled, it would not lead to a contradiction and unacceptability. In addition, the computation of the implicature must be blind to common knowledge. Otherwise, given the piece of information that events of burying are always associated with an external cause, (106a) and (106b) would be truth-conditionally equivalent, and an utterance of (106a) would not trigger the implicature that the speaker is not in a position to assert (106b). A theory of blind and mandatory implicatures was developed by Magri (2009), in order to account for lifetime effects of individual-level predicates. For reasons of space, I will not discuss how the present analysis could be implemented in Magri’s framework. There are certainly loose ends to tie up, but I believe that the broad lines of this analysis are clear enough for our purposes.

Importantly, this analysis can account for the felicity of target state resultatives derived from non-alternating lexical causatives, given adequate assumptions about the set of syntactic alternatives to adjectival passives. Consider for instance example (107):

The implicature that is responsible for the unacceptability of inchoative uses of buried depends on a competition between the verbal passive and inchoative forms of the verb. Under the assumption that target state adjectival passives do not compete with verbal passives, they will not trigger the faulty implicature. If adjectival and verbal passives differ in syntactic category in English, this assumption could be reduced to the more general requirement that two constituents cannot be syntactic alternatives of one another unless they have the same category, a requirement that is already part of Katzir’s (2007) theory of structural alternatives.

5.4 Conspiracies

The analysis that was presented in this section relies on post-linearization spanning. However, it is also possible to model Mbyá verb morphology even if Vocabulary Insertion is limited to terminal nodes. To do so, one may wish to posit null exponents for Voice and little v heads. In order to account for the lack of covert alternations targeting external arguments, the former should be restricted to contexts that include the root of a lexically transitive verb:

Likewise, in order to block the insertion of roots of transitive verbs in inchoative verb frames, the exponents of these roots should be specified for insertion in the context of a Voice head:

In such a system, the absence of external argument alternations with roots of causative verbs arises as a conspiracy, as in the case of English irregular past tense inflection.¹⁹ In the latter case, the blocking of a regular past tense verb form in the context of √SING conspires with the blocking of the regular exponent of √SING in the context of T_[+PAST]. In the former, the realization of agent/causer Voice by the causative prefix mo- is blocked in the context of a transitive root, while the phonological realization of the root is restricted to the context of agent/causer Voice.

While such an analysis is tenable, I believe that an analysis based on insertion at non-terminal nodes is more elegant. Indeed, in the conspiracy analysis, the restriction of the root of a causative verb to a transitive frame is encoded in the Vocabulary Item that specifies the exponent of this root. The fact that Voice is not realized independently from the root is arbitrarily encoded in a second Vocabulary Item. While this arbitrariness may be justified in the analysis of irregular processes, the morphology of Mbyá verbs appears to be a paragon of regularity, which is elegantly captured by the spanning analysis.

Note that I am not claiming that analyses of irregularities in post-linearization spanning are generally more principled than analyses that rely on null exponents and readjustment rules. As Haugen & Siddiqi (2016) recognize, the use of homophony in the former is no less stipulative than that of lexically conditioned zero allomorphs. In the specific case that concerns us here, however, a spanning analysis appears to more elegant.