ijo Paulette Levy
The non-agentive suffix -n is also used to derive inchoative intransitive verbs
from nouns, for events that happen to the undergoer without the intervention of
an outside force, like the growth of hair or the appearance of pimples, as shown in
(453, b). This is further evidence of the 'spontaneous' nature of the events denoted
by intransitive verbs built in this pattern.
(45) (a) maqchi'xinqu'dh minqa'wasa
maq-chi'xi-n-qu':-lh min-qa'wasa
body-hair-iNCH-TERM-CFL iposs-boy
'Your boy has grown hair all over his body.'
(b) klakaci'ci'lh
k-laka-ci'ci'-n-lh
i-face-pimple-iNCH-cpL
T got "bepimpled" on my face.'
4.1.2. Causative transitive verbsAnother type of evidence for the underlying semantics of the adjective category
in PT comes from transitive verb formation. The set of intransitive verbs for emo-
tion and appraisal, such as get angry', 'be happy', 'be attractive', which are the bases
for HUMAN PROPENSITY adjectives and, like them, signal a simple change of inner
state with no agentive outside force, form transitives in a different way than intran-
sitives of most other semantic types of verbs. Instead of using any of the varieties
of the transitivizer ma: i: ~ ma:-.. .-/:, -V, -ni (by far the most prevalent pro-
cesses of transitivization/causativization), they employ the causativizer maqa-, as
shown in (46).
(46) pa:xawa 'P is happy' maqa-paxawa 'A does something that causes P
to become happy'
si:ci': 'P is angry' maqa-si:ci: 'A does something that causes P
to become angry'
li:puwan 'P. worries' maqali:puwan 'A does something that cause P
to worry'
The prefix maqa-, which we might call an 'indirect causative' marker (however,
see Dixon 2000: 70, and Shibatani 2002:11-14 on the need for further study of the
much abused term of'indirect causation), forms the causative of verbs of change
of DIMENSION for animates. These include other deadjectival inchoative verbs (de-
rived in -n), as shown in (473,b), as well as other basic intransitives like grow', as
illustrated by (470). As in the verbs in (46), the intransitives that express change
of DIMENSION for animates in (47) are conceptualized as happening without out-
side force and the Causer only does something that triggers the natural process.
Observe the same semantic contrast in the two different ways of forming verbs for
getting old', (48), not in the same semantic class as change of DIMENSION for ani-
mates, but change of AGE for animates.