A Minimalist Approach to Causative Structures in Dakota

Dakota is an endangered Siouan language with a dwindling number of native speakers. In accordance with the Dakota Language Project, this paper documents the behavior and patterns of causatives in Dakota (e.g. ktewakhiya ‘I cause someone to kill’). I determine that both the direct causative (-yA) and the indirect causative (-khiyA) are morphological under Comrie’s typology, meaning they are productive and can be applied recursively. I provide some evidence to suggest that direct causatives (-yA) occur with stative verbs while indirect causatives (-khiyA) occur with active verbs. Additionally, I provide evidence that the causatives are best analyzed as verb stems rather than suffixes because they take pronominal affixes like verbs and can causativize nouns to create verbal predicates. I argue for a Minimalist analysis of Dakota causatives, specifically under Pylkkänen’s (2002) CAUSE head model. I suggest that both Dakota causatives are Voice- bundling and do not allow causative constructions without an external argument. Finally, I argue that Dakota causatives are not root-selecting because they allow some elements of verbal morphology to intervene between the causative and the root. Due to limited data, I was unable to determine whether Dakota causatives should be considered verb-selecting or phase-selecting. However, I give suggestions for future research that can contribute to this debate. Finding evidence that sentences such as “I cleverly caused you to fight” and “I caused you to fight cleverly” can be expressed in the same way in Dakota could provide an argument that causatives are phase-selecting. If those two sentences are expressed differently, then Dakota causatives are likely verb-selecting