Kimeru Causatives: a morphosyntactic study in a construction Grammar approach.

Abstract

This study sought to study causatives in the Kimeru language. Common Kimeru words used in this study were derived from its Igoji dialect. The study's objectives were: to find out how causatives are formed in Kimeru, to describe the structure of causative constructions in Kimeru, and to examine morphological causatives using the Goldberg theory of construction grammar. This is a theory of cognitive linguistics that claims that language is not inborn, but instead, learners learn constructions from generalizations and the environment to which they are exposed. The constructions are then stored in the human mind and produced when the need arises. The research was based on a sample of Kimeru words and phrases obtained from native speakers of the Igoji dialect. Simultaneously, the researcher analyzed the data used in this study and counter-checked by four other native speakers, the Igoji dialect, for authenticity. Some other data was obtained from secondary sources, which included storybooks and other Kimeru materials and articles. The data was then put into categories and analyzed syntactically by explaining the argument structure of causative verbs in Kimeru. Templates explaining the semantic component and syntactic analysis of Kimeru causatives were exemplified and observations made about the nature of the causatives. Much emphasis was laid on morphological causatives in Kimeru with modification of the templates provided by Goldberg (1995) to accommodate the morphological process of causativization in Kimeru. The discussions found out that Kimeru has three causative types, with the morphological causatives being highly productive and the lexical and analytic causatives less common. It was also found that indirect causation, which involved the lexical and analytic causative verbs, can be well accounted for using the construction grammar theory. The argument structure representation occurred with the caused-motion and resultative constructions. Another finding was that the argument structure of morphological causatives could be accounted for using the construction grammar theory by modifying the templates and generalizations of the transitive, caused-motion, resultative, and ditransitive constructions. This study concluded that the argument structure of causative verbs in Kimeru could be accounted for using the construction grammar theory.