The States in Changes of State1

1. States and the causative/inchoative alternation The morphological typology of words denoting non-causative and causative COS predicates, as in (1a,b) respectively (i.e., the causative/inchoative alternation) has been relatively well studied in the typological literature. (Nedjalkov and Silnitsky 1973, Croft 1990, Haspelmath 1993). (1) a. The vase broke. b. Kim broke the vase. One of the main findings of this body of research is that there is no single direction of morphological derivation from causative to inchoative or inchoative to causative. Instead, words naming different kinds of events tend to show different directions of derivation (Croft 1990, Haspelmath 1993, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995). COS events that generally come about spontaneously, such as freezing events, for example, tend to be lexicalized as inchoatives, with the causative being derived, as shown for Swahili in (2). (2) Swahili freezing events (Haspelmath 2005:5) a. ganda (intransitive) b. gand-isha (transitive) In contrast, events that tend not to come about spontaneously, such as events of breaking, are generally lexicalized as causatives, with the inchoative derived as shown again for Swahili by the data in (3). (3) Swahili breaking events (Haspelmath 2005:5) a. vunja (transitive) b. vunj-ika (intransitive) 1Above all, I acknowledge the collaboration of the members of the community-based Ulwa Languag