Verb Types(54) a elmozdította a dobozt
away-moved-3.s. the box-acc
‘he moved the box’
b a doboz elmozdult
‘the box moved’
(55) a gépesítette a mezgazdaságot
mechanised-3.s. the farmland
‘he mechanised the farmland’
b a mezgazdaság gépesült
‘the farmland (became) mechanised’
As we see in these examples, Hungarian has a similar alternation with a set of
‘change of state’ verbs. Moreover, the transitive versions all have a causative reading,
just like the English examples we have been looking at. The interesting point is that
the Hungarian causative verbs have a special form with the morpheme ít indicating
causative:
(56) pre-verb stem causative tense agreement
le- gur -ít -ot -ta
(fel-) ép -ít -et -te
el- mozd -ít -ot -ta
gépes -ít -et -te
Putting aside the issue of tense and agreement inflections, it is possible to give a
very similar analysis of the Hungarian causative verbs to the one we proposed for
English causatives, with a causative light verb introducing the causative interpretation
and the agent subject:
(57) vP
DP v'
() v VP
-ít DP V'
a labdát V
gur
The difference between English and Hungarian, however, is that the causative
element is not phonologically empty in Hungarian. The ít morpheme, however, is a
bound morpheme, which means that it must attach to some appropriate stem, i.e. a
verb, and this is the trigger for the movement:
agenttheme