A Study on Causativity, Transitivity, and Causative Alternation in Modern Chinese Causative Constructions

This study investigates various causative constructions in Modern Chinese, focusing on the interplay between causativity and transitivity, and offers a systematic analysis from the perspective of causative alternation. Owing to its isolating nature and flexible thematic role hierarchy, Chinese can generate a wide range of causative constructions without morphological changes in the verb, instead utilizing word order manipulation, resultative complements, and the addition of causative verbs. This study categorizes Chinese causative constructions into lexical, morphological, constructional, and syntactic types, and examines how intransitivity and transitivity are distributed and converted across these types. Notably, even inherently non-alternating verb types—such as agentive intransitive and agentive transitive verbs—can undergo causative alternation through constructions like resultative compounds, “得”-constructions, and inverted causative structures. These findings demonstrate that the interaction between causativity and transitivity plays a crucial role in the formation of causative structures and the organization of event structure in Chinese. By providing an integrated account of this interaction, the present study contributes to broadening the theoretical foundation for research on Chinese causatives and offers a new direction for future inquiry.