Lithuanian intensive causatives and their history
Abstract
The article deals with a small group of Lithuanian verbs in which causative morphology has acquired an intensive function. While causative-intensive polyfunctionality is well attested typologically, the Lithuanian instance is interesting in that the intensive function manifests itself in reflexivised causatives. This development seems to be a consequence of the co-occurrence of causative and reflexive derivation as devices for building transitivity pairs in Baltic. The combination of the two devices yields intransitivised causatives that become semantically differentiated from the corresponding primary intransitives through developing an intensive function.
Keywords
causative, reflexive, intensive, Lithuanian, Baltic
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