Blocking and causatives: unexpected competition across derivations

Abstract

The Japanese causative verb exhibits the effects of blocking, whereby a causative verb (V-sase) is blocked from taking on lexical meaning if there is a competing lexical causative verb (Miyagawa (1980, 1984)). Given that the causative verb is most reasonably viewed as being formed in syntax, the blocking effect leads to the conclusion that the lexical causatives also are formed in syntax, contrary to the traditional view. A similar blocking effect is observed with English causatives formed with make, and this, together with what we can observe in Japanese, suggest that blocking is best viewed as one that arises in the process of deriving the causative verb (e.g., Embick and Marantz (2008)), and not as a result of a filter on the output of the generative component (e.g., Kiparsky (2005)).