Causative and applicative

Passive and anti-passive morphology signal a reduction in the number of arguments that a verb has. There are other sorts of morphology that signal that arguments have been added to a verb.

Causatives signal the addition of a new subject argument, which semantically is the causer of the action. If the verb has only one argument to begin with, the causative sentence has two, and if it has two to begin with, the causative sentence has three arguments. Compare the Swahili sentences in (8) and (9):

In (8a), the verb ‘boil’ has only one argument, its patient/theme. In (8b), along with the causative morpheme -(i)sh , an external causer argument is added as the subject of the sentence. Similarly, in (9a), the verb ‘cook’ has two arguments, an agent (Halima) and a patient (‘food’); the agent is the subject of the sentence. When the causative suffix -(i)sh is added, a third argument (Juma) is added and it becomes the subject.

Applicative morphology, like causative morphology, signals the addition of an argument to the valency of a verb. But the added argument is an object, rather than a subject. We can again use Swahili for our example:

The suffix -i signals that a second object (Juma) has been added to the verb.