Reassessing the areality of sociative causative markers: A South American feature

Abstract An avenue for the progress of areal linguistics in South America is the investigation of the geographical distribution of specific features, such as the expression of sociative causation. Sociative causation is a particular type of causation where the causer not only makes the causee do an action but also participates in it (Shibatani & Pardeshi, 2002). Guillaume & Rose (2010) hypothesize that dedicated sociative causative markers are an areal feature of South America, in particular western South America. The aim of the present paper is to reassess the spatial distribution of these markers based on a large worldwide sample of 325 languages. The results show that dedicated sociative causative markers are significantly more frequent in South America compared to the rest of the world.