Causalness and the encoding of the causative/anticausative alternation in Italian psych verbs. Extending Heidinger’s corpus research of French and Spanish change-of-state verbs.

Italian verbs participating in the causative/anticausative alternation encode the alternants in two ways. The causative and the anticausative alternant may have a marked or an unmarked variant depending on the verb type. The aim of this research is to extend to Italian Heidinger’s (2015) corpus study, which shows that the encoding of the alternants is related to the causalness of the verbs, i.e. the quantitative relation between the causative and the anticausative use. Heidinger’s research is based on a sample of 20 French and 20 Spanish verbs. The author states that, in both languages, verbs used more often as causatives than as anticausatives have a high degree of causalness, while verbs used more often as anticausatives than as causatives have a low degree of causalness. The present research assesses a sample of 22 Italian psych verbs which participate in the causative/anticausative alternation. I will show that Italian verbs with a high degree of causalness tend to form unmarked causatives and marked anticausatives,, while verbs with a low degree of causalness tend to form marked causatives and unmarked anticausatives.