Tunica (Gulf?)

There is a lexically-marked set of verbs which are morphologically causative, but lack the semantica and syntactic characteristics of causatives.

1 Background

Tunica verbs fall into three inflectionally distinct classes: stative, active and auxiliary; only the last two classes concern us. Active verbs in turn are divided into non-causative and causative. Causativization is fully productive; Haas writes '[a]ny non-causative intransitive stem may be transitivized by being transferred frm the non-causative to the causative category' (p. 46). Some examples:

Haas also gives examples of causatives formed from impersonals, which may be intransitive, e.g. from impersonal wi 'sound', the causative may be transitive ('hear') or intranstive ('listen').

Verb inflection involves both synthetic and periphrastic forms. One of the chief distinctions between non-causative and causative inflection is that causatives use only periphrastic forms. The basic principles of the system are these:

• Non-causatives verbs, synthetic forms: there are distinct synthetic paradigms for the semelfactive, habitual, repetitive and conditional. Each of these values is marked by distinct person-gender-number subject endings. The semelfactive is construed as the basic form.
• Non-causative verbs, periphrastic forms: additional verbal categories may be marked periphrastically by auxiliary verbs added to the bare verb stem, either in its plain (semelfactive) form, or with a habitual suffix. Auxiliaries include ʔuhki 'he is/was' yielding past tense, ʔura 'he lies/lay' and ʔuna 'he sits/sat' yielding duratives, and ʔusa 'he comes/came' and ʔuwa 'he goes/went' marking direction. (These auxiliaries may also occur as independent verbs.) Note that subject person is prefixal on auxiliaries, not suffixal, as it is on main verbs.
• Causative verbs: where non-causative verbs have synthetic forms, causative verbs have periphrastic forms using the bound auxiliary -ʔuta 'he causes'; note that like other auxilaries, the causative auxiliary has no habitual form. Where non-causative verbs have periphrastic forms, causatives have essentially the same behaviour, using one of the other auxiliaries listed above in place of the causative auxiliary. In that case, the causative value is marked on the main verb through the suffix -n (similarly, the infinitive has the causative suffix -ni). There are sporadic instances where this does not occur, i.e. where two auxiliaries co-occur in the same construction -- see the last example in the following table.

The following fragment of the paradigm for lɔta 'run' illustrates the system:

2 Deponency in Tunica

Haas notes that there are verbs which are 'always inflected in the causative category even though their meanings do not reflect the notion of causativity'. Some are transtive (wisa 'tease', šihka 'help, aid'), and some are intransitive ( ʔuru 'whoop, shout', wira 'count'). (Transitivity is reflected in the presence or absence of object marking prefixes.) For example:

has all of the morphological characteristics of a regular causative, but is intransitive, and has no morphologically non-causative counterpart.

References

Haas, Mary R. Tunica. 1940. New York: J. J. Augustin.