Всичко е наред с глагола
Everything Is Fine with the Verb

Innovation Processes of Transitivization and Dereflexivization as a Means of Attributing Causality

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents a summary of the observations on the tranisitivization and dereflexivization of Bulgarian verbs as a means of attributing causativity. The majority of the newly formed verbs that we analyze are causative while others may, under certain conditions and in particular sentences, exemplify the causative rule. The lability of morphological identification regarding the transitivity – intransitivity distinction is the reason to examine the excerpted verbs as being either A- or Р-labile. The following tendency can be observed: P-lability has to do with causativity, while A-labile verbs are not-causative. In such cases the subject does not undergo changes neither in their intransitive nor in their transitive use. With P-labile verbs, the subject of the intransitive verb becomes the object of the transitive verb. There are some ambivalent verbs, such as minavam (pass), premina (pass over), svetna (light up), spomagam (facilitate), stigna (reach), treniram (train). Although the second group contains 40 causatives and the third group has 3 verbs, the lability procedure is not applicable because of the difference between the reflexive with the se- (се) marker and the transitive verb, i.e. the mismatch in form also means non-lability. The examples in the third group can also be viewed as the absolute use of the transitive verb meaning. The changes in the verbs indicate a change in the way contemporary Bulgarians think – the causative verbs serve as an expression of an active position, while the interplay between transitive and intransitive and/or reflexive and non-reflexive verbs has mostly pragmatic purposes, such as achieving a certain communicative effect, attractiveness, informality.

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