La transitivation causative : approche contrastive et typologique

International audienceThe paper analyses the phenomenon of causative transitivation (CT). Some verbs, basically intransitive in French, can be used in a transitive clause with a causative meaning (Fais bouger ta ville vs Bouge ta ville !). In French, the CT is explained in different ways: influence from English or dialectal varieties, diachronic evolution, pragmatic purposes. Bulgarian linguists consider that this tendency in modern Bulgarian is inluenced by English. My hypothesis is that the CT depends essentially on the syntactic and semantic properties of the verbs. The CT is analysed according to the frame of the modular approach (Noelke 1999). From syntactic point of view, faire adds a new argument to the valency of the basic verb (+1 argument). From semantic point of view, the compact constructions reveal a higher degree of agentivity of the subject (Givòn, 1980). From pragmatic point of view , this syntactic variation is intentional.Causative transitivation also exists in English, Bulgarian, Russian, Spanish and operates with the same semantic classes of verbs: verbs of manner of motion or verbs of change of state. The examples from the corpora confirm the results of Levin & Rappaport’ Unaccusative Hypothesis (1995). The lexical causatives issued from CT can be analysed as semantic universals