A Survey on Causative Alternation in Persian Based on Causal Approach

According to causal hypothesis, the main factor in argument realization is causal relationship between participants. Based on this hypothesis, alternations can be accounted for, by difference in verbal profiles. In causative alternations, the difference between two constructions is due to the initial point of verbal profile: In causative variant, causer is located at the initial point but in anticausative variant, it is occupied with cause, because anticausative variant describes a situation in which the focus is on the change of causee. The manual study of 3602 data taken from Hamshahri Corpus II survey revealed that focusing on the change of causee is related to topicality. Causee which appears as subject is more topical than causer. data analysis, also revealed that in causative constructions, the topicality of causer and consequently focusing on the causality of it, induce causer to reveal as subject.