Causative in Sasak: A Mechanism of Valency Increase

This study discusses the formation of causatives based on the criteria proposed by Dixon (2012). Pertain to the mechanism of valency increasing, it is found that causative construction in Sasak Kuto-Kute dialect covers two forms: morphological and lexical. Morphological causative involves the process of adding confix N -ang/in and affix -in to the non-causative base verb, whilst, the lexical causative uses the causative verb mate 'died/killed'. Furthermore, it was found that the formation of causative from intransitive verbs can be done by moving the original S to O position in the causative construction, which is morphologically marked on the verb, and also using different verbs with the same meaning to form the causative construction which is followed by the transfer of the original S to O position. For transitive verbs, the formation can be done through the use of affixes with the original A and original O both becoming O1 and O2. Last, the causative construction in the dialect semantically involves five semantic parameters, namely transparency, naturalness, intention, involvement, and control.