Causative constructions in Japanese and Slovene

Abstract

Whereas Japanese has a productive causative morpheme -( s)ase- that is added to a non-causative verb to derive a causative verb, Slovene has no such single morpheme that may be considered to directly correspond with the Japanese morpheme. This arti­ cle considers causative constructions first from a typological perspective, and then in present-day Japanese and Slovene by examining a small corpus of literary texts. The use of the Japanese causative morpheme is analyzed according to the characteristic of agency. For the most typical causative situation (with agentive causer and causee), corresponding Slovene constructions are analyzed.