3.

3 The processing of causative alternation structures by

Karaja/Portuguese bilinguals1
Marcus Maia
UFRJ/CNPq

Abstract
This article investigates the on-line processing of causative alternation structures in Brazilian
Portuguese and in Karaja, a Macro-Je language spoken by 3000 persons in Central Brazil.
Brazilian Portuguese (BP) monolinguals were tested in a self paced reading task and compared
to Karaja subjects who were tested both in their native language and in BP. Results support the
psychological reality of morphological computation and suggest that morphology facilitation is
not transferred from L1 to L2.
Keywords
argument structure, causative alternation, morphological computation, bilingualism, transfer,
sentence processing.

1. Introduction
Inchoative constructions such as This book sells well have been
analyzed as resulting from NP movement from the canonical object position to
subject position and should be structurally more complex than their causative
counterparts, for example, a transitive construction such as This clerk sells
the book, which would be the starting point of the derivation (Keyser & Roeper,
1984). Di Sciullo, De Almeida, Manouilidou, & Dwivedi (2007) report acceptability
judgment experiments on English middle constructions which show that there
seems to be a processing correlate of the structural complexity of middles,
which is manifested in their longer acceptability times and rejection rates when
compared to transitive constructions with animate (e.g., This clerk sells well) or
inanimate agents (e.g., This store sells well).
The present study elaborates on Maia et al (2009/to appear) which tested
subjects in two typologically diverse languages, the Amazonian languages of
Brazil, Karaj and Xavante, both OV type languages, comparing them to Brazilian
1 I would like to thank Waxiaki Karaja, Wadoi Karaja and Woubedu Karaja, principal and teachers of the Damiana
da Cunha school in the Karaja village of Santa Isabel do Morro (Hawalo) for having made available to us the school
premises and the Karaja high school students who took part in this study. I should thank also Roberto de Almeida
(Concordia University) and Ana Fontes (UTEP) for helpful suggestions and comments on an earlier draft of this
paper. This research is funded by CNPq, grant 300673/2008-6.

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Portuguese (BP), in order to assess whether the morphological identification of

inchoatives in the verb form, as it is the case in Karaja, would improve their
acceptability. Results of BP and Xavante experiments indicated that inchoatives
are indeed significantly more rejected than both transitive constructions. However,
in Karaj, where inchoatives are morphologically marked in the verb forms, no
significant differences were observed. It is proposed that the morphological
marking of inchoatives can make up for their syntactic complexity facilitating
their processing. Therefore, results were taken to support the psychological
reality of the morphological computation in comprehension.
The current study further examined the processing of the causative
alternation by Karaja subjects who are bilingual in Karaja and Portuguese.
To assess whether bilinguals would transfer their morphological facilitation in
Karaja to Portuguese, inchoative and transitive sentences were presented in
two self paced reading experiments. A third experiment was carried out with BP
monolingual speakers, as baseline. Results demonstrated that the facilitation
effect of the Karaja morphology is not transferred to L2 BP . The article is
organized as follows. Section 2 presents the causative alternation in BP and in
Karaja and reviews the findings of Maia et al (2009). Section 3 briefly sketches
theories on L1 transfer and sets the questions at stake in the study of Karaja/BP
bilinguals. Section 4 presents the three self paced experiments and Section 5
presents the conclusions of the study.
2. The causative alternation
The so called causative alternation is a transitivity variation of unaccusative
verbs, also known in the literature as the causative-anticausative alternation. It
typically involves verbs which express change of state, as exemplified in (1) and
(2), in Brazilian Portuguese (BP):
(1).

(2).

O menino quebrou o copo. (transitive/causative)

The boy broke the glass
O copo quebrou. (intransitive/anticausative or inchoative)
The glass broke

Note that in BP as in English and several other languages there are no

morphological differences between the two corresponding verb forms which
are called labile (cf. Haspelmath, 1993). In other languages, such as European
Portuguese, the intransitive member of the pair is marked by the clitic se, as

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exemplified in (3):
(3). O copo partiu-se

The glass broke
In addition to this anticausative pattern of marking, there are languages
which employ the causative pattern, morphologically marking the transitive form.
In Karaja, lexical ou direct causation may be more marked than the anticausative
form and indirect or syntactic causation is even more marked than lexical
causation, as illustrated in (4), (5) and (6) below:
(4). Rysyna r-u-hu-ra

Food 3-IN-cold-PAST

The food got cold
(5) Hawyy rysyna r-itxu-hu-ny-ra

Woman food 3-TRANS-cold-VB-PAST

The woman cooled the food
(6) Hawyy rysyna r-itxu-hu-dy-ny-ra

Woman food 3-TRANS-cold-CAUS-VB-PAST

The woman made the food get cold
Karaja also exhibits, however, non-directed alternations, employing
equipollent and suppletive patterns. In the equipollent pattern, none of the forms
of the alternation is morphologically more complex than the other. Examples (7),
(9) and (11) illustrate the transitive counterparts of the alternation, identified in
the verb forms by the morpheme i- , whereas data (8), (10) and (12) illustrate,
respectively, the inchoative counterparts, identified by the morpheme a-.
(7) Karirama kua heto
r-i-s-ra

Karirama that house 3-TRANS-burn-PAST

Karirama burned that house
(8) Kua heto
r-a-s-ra

That house 3-IN-burn-PAST

That house burned

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(9) Tii wyhy r-i-kr-ra

He arrow 3-TRANS-break-PAST

He broke the arrow
(10) Wyhy r-a-kr-ra

Arrow 3-IN-break-PAST

The arrow broke
(11) Kua hawyy
ri
r-i-yka-ra

That woman hammock 3-TRANS-tear-PAST

That woman tore the hammock
(12) ri r-a-yka-ra

hammock 3-IN-tear-PAST

The hammock tore
Suppletive forms which are morphologically unrelated also occur in Karaja,
as in any other language. Examples (13) and (14) display verbs whose root
meanings are in inchoative/causative relation, even though there is no systematic
morphological relation between them:
(13) Hawyy iweru ritxiwira

Woman porridge spilled

The woman spilled the porridge
(14) Iweru rejujura

Porridge spilled

The porridge spilled
It seems clear that, although semantic composition may be relatively
uniform cross-linguistically, languages do vary as to how they encode the
causative alternation morphologically on the verb, with zero or overt morphemes
in either of the variants of the alternation. Brazilian Portuguese seems to employ
only the labile pattern whereas Karaja uses both the causative pattern, coding
the transitive forms, and the equipollent pattern in which each variant is marked
by a specific morpheme.

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In Maia et al (2009/to appear), we proposed a constructionist analysis for

the representation of the causative alternation in Karaja, based on the Distributed
Morphology theory (DM). The morphological alternation of the inchoative/
causative verb prefixes in Karaja is analyzed as two types or flavors of little v
(v *), as proposed by Hale & Keyser (1993, 2002), Marantz (1997) and Harley
(2006). Both in the inchoative and in the causative constructions, a lower verbal
root moves upward to the little v head that c-commands it and creates more
complex adjunction structures that must subsequently move to T heads. The
crucial difference between the two constructions, however, lies in the nature of
the little v head the inchoative little v does not project an external argument
and has the value BECOME, whereas the causative little v projects an external
argument and has the value CAUSE. We argued that such a constructionist
analysis is supported by the experimental findings that show the psychological
reality of the morphemes that encode the causative alternation in Karaja, which
would equalize the acceptability of the inchoative and the causative variants.
This pattern is shown in the results of off-line speeded judgment experiments
comparing the processing of those structures in Karaja with Xavante and BP,
which display a labile pattern. In contrast with Karaja, in Xavante and BP,
inchoatives are significantly more rejected than their transitive counterparts. It is
proposed that even though smaller acceptability rates for inchoatives in these
labile languages may be indicative of their more complex argument structure (the
NP movement analysis), the morphological marking of inchoatives in Karaja can
make up for their syntactic complexity and facilitate their processing.
This constructionist or exoskeletal approach (cf. Borer, 2005), in which the
functional structure is independent of the lexical properties of verbs, contrasts with
the lexicalist or endoskeletal approach. The lexicalist or endoskeletal approach
proposes that there is a tendency in languages that arguments with certain
theta roles always occur in the same syntactic positions and that this fact is an
indication that syntactic properties of verbs are determined by their meaning (cf.
Levin & Rappaport-Hovav, 1995, p.1). In Maia et al (2009/to appear), we argued
that the psychological reality of the morphological computation as indicated by
the experimental results on the processing of verb argument structure could
adduce evidence in favor of exoskeletal theories such as DM and, therefore,
serve as criteria in the comparison of theories.
In the present study, we keep these issues in mind, as we turn our attention
to the problem known as one mind, two languages (cf. Nicol, 2001) what is
the ecology of languages in the bilingual mind? Are they independent or do they

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share resources of representation and processing? Is there transfer from the

morphology of L1 on L2? More specifically, in our case, if there is morphology in
the L1 which signals argument structure properties, as it is the case of Karaja, is
the Karaja L2 comprehender of a labile language, such as Portuguese, influenced
by the fact that his/her first language morphologically encodes the alternation?
Does L1 argument structure morphology transfer to L2?
A major question in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research is what
is the starting point for L2 learners. Do they have direct access to Universal
Grammar (UG) or all properties of L1 are transferred into SLA? This is the Full
Transfer Hypothesis (cf. Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996) that proposes that the
L2 learner assumes that L2 is just like L1. All parameter values of L1 would
immediately carry over as the initial state of L2 acquisition. The main job of the
L2 learner would then be to reset parameters (White, 2003). Other scholars have
proposed that L1 transfer is not so pervasive. For example, Vainikka & YoungScholten (1996) have claimed that learners transfer the lexicon and its syntactic
properties, but not the functional features of language. The idea of partial or
modular transfer regarding transitivity alternations has also been advanced by
Montrul (2000).
Montrul adopts the lexicalist or endoskeletal view of argument structure
of Rappaport, Hovav and Levin (1998) in which verbs are made up of semantic
primitives and are merged in structural templates at the so-called L-syntax level.
Distinguishing event structure as given by UG from morphology, Montrul reports
experiments with advanced L2 learners which suggest that if there is morphology
in the L1 which signals argument-structure properties, L2 learners would be
influenced by such morphology. Therefore, Montrul proposes that there is no
transfer at the conceptual level of argument structure, but that there is transfer
at the level of morphology. Juffs (1998) also intended to control for differences in
argument structure and morphological markings in a series of self paced reading
and grammaticality judgment experiments manipulating causative/inchoative
verb structures applied to very advanced learners of English from a variety of L1
backgrounds (native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, three Romance
languages, besides native English speakers). His results point to the conclusion
that there is transfer based not on conceptual complexity of argument structures
but due to the way causativity is encoded in the bound morphology and
possibly to the transfer of parsing strategy in the L1 (Juffs, 1998, p. 421).
The research on Karaja/Portuguese late bilinguals which we will present
in the next section intends to address the following questions: (1) Are

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inchoative structures read slower than their transitive counterparts? (2) Does
the morphological encoding of inchoatives in Karaja facilitate their on-line
processing? (3) Do Karaja native speakers who are bilingual in Portuguese display
facilitation in their second language? Questions (1) and (2) are motivated by the
findings of Maia et al (to appear) that Karaja morphology seems to facilitate the
comprehension of inchoatives in an off-line task. Our objective would be, now,
to assess whether these effects can be established in a more on-line technique
as the self paced reading task, addressing time course issues with implications
for language architecture. Question (3) addresses the questions reviewed above
relating to the issue of L1 transfer to L2. We want to know whether Karaja
late learners of BP display on-line evidence of facilitation in the processing of
inchoatives and whether such facilitation, if it exists, would carry over to the
processing of BP which, unlike Karaja, does not encode transitivity alternations
through functional morphology. To this end we will have to compare the BP
behavior of Karaja bilinguals with the behavior of BP monolinguals, as baseline.
3. The self-paced reading experiments on Karaja and Portuguese
In this section we will report the three self paced reading experiments which
were designed to investigate the questions reviewed above. Experiment 1 was
applied to a group of monolingual BP subjects, experiment 2 was applied to a
group of Karaja/BP late bilinguals who were tested in Karaja, and experiment 3
was applied to a group of Karaja/BP late bilinguals who were tested in BP.
3. 1 Experiment 1 Monolingual BP subjects
There were three experimental conditions, namely, an inchoative structure
(IN), a transitive animate structure (TA) and a transitive inanimate structure (TI).
As in the speeded acceptability judgment reported in Maia et al (2009), the TI
condition was included to control for typicality effects of the subject position,
typically agentive. The experimental task was the noncumulative self paced
reading paradigm coupled with a sentence final yes/no comprehension question.
The hypothesis was that inchoative clauses would be read more slowly than
both their transitive counterparts due to their more complex argument structure.
Method
Participants
Participants in the study were 12 undergraduate students of the Speech

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Therapy course at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who reported to be

monolingual in Portuguese. They were all female and their mean age was 22.
Materials
The stimuli were 15 triads of BP inchoative, transitive animate and transitive
inanimate sentences distributed in a Latin Square design, as illustrated in Figure
1. Sentences were divided into three clauses. The second clause was the critical
segment, containing either an inchoative, a transitive animate or a transitive
inanimate verb structure. The 15 experimental sentences were randomly
interspersed among 30 fillers.
Cond/
Seg

Seg 1

Seg 2

Seg 3

IN

O homem empurrou
com fora,

ento a rede rasgou

toda

e a criana caiu.

A rede rasgou.

the child fell

The hammock tore

The man pushed hard

then the hammock

tore all

O homem empurrou
com fora,

ento a mulher rasgou

a rede

e a criana caiu.

A mulher rasgou a rede

the child fell

The man pushed hard

then the woman tore

the hammock

The woman tore the

hammock

O homem empurrou
com fora,

Ento a bola rasgou

a rede

e a criana caiu.

A bola rasgou a rede

the child fell

The man pushed hard

Then the ball tore the

hammock

The ball tore the

hammock

TA

TI

Question

Table 1: Sample of materials used in Experiment 1

Procedures
Participants were individually tested using a MacBook Air laptop running
a Psyscope protocol for collecting noncumulative self paced reading times. The
primary task on each trial was to press a yellow key to call to the screen and read
the three clauses in which each sentence was split. After reading each sentence,
subjects were instructed to decide whether the statement which automatically
appeared on the screen after reading the third segment was true or false, by
pressing a green or a red key on the keyboard. Testing sessions were preceded
by a practice and lasted approximately 15 minutes.

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Results
Error rates in the comprehension questions were very low for all conditions
(4% for IN, 0% for TA and 6% for TI). As predicted, average reading times differed
significantly in the critical area (second segment) between IN and TA. Reading
times were significantly higher in IN than TA, [t (94)=2,49;p=0,01*]. Reading
times were also significantly higher in IN than in TI [t(94)=2,93;p=0,004**].
TA and TI reading times, however, did not exhibit any significant differences
[t(94)=0,58;p=0,55 ns]. Analyses of the reading times for segments 1 and 3
revealed no reliable differences between conditions (all ps > 0.1).

Figure 1: Average reading times in Experiment 1

Discussion
Results indicated that inchoatives in BP are read significantly slower than
both transitive conditions, confirming predictions based on off-line acceptability
judgments reported in Maia et al (2009). These results are also in line with those
obtained for English in an SPR experiment reported in Di Sciullo, De Almeida,
Manouilidou, & Dwivedi (2007) which showed longer processing times for
inchoatives as opposed to transitive constructions. These results are analyzed
as a processing correlate of the structural complexity of inchoatives, whose
derivation requires syntactic movement from internal argument position, whereas
transitive constructions have base generated subjects.
3.2. Experiment 2 Karaja/BP late bilinguals tested in Karaja
This experiment had the same three conditions as in Experiment 1, namely,
an inchoative structure (IN), a transitive animate structure (TA) and a transitive

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inanimate structure (TI), but it was conducted in Karaja. The experimental task
was also the same as in Experiment 1, the noncumulative self paced reading
paradigm coupled with a sentence final yes/no comprehension question.
However, now, the hypothesis was that inchoatives, which are marked through
verb prefixes in Karaja, would present similar reading times as their transitive
counterparts in line with previous results obtained in an off-line task (cf. Maia et
al, 2009)
Method
Participants
Participants in the study were 12 high school teachers and students in
the Damiana da Cunha school in the Karaja village of Santa Isabel do Morro
(Hawal), in the Bananal Island, state of Tocantins. They were all native speakers
of Karaja, literate in both Karaja and BP, late bilinguals in BP, and their mean
age was 26.
Materials
The stimuli were 15 triads of Karaja inchoative, transitive animate and
transitive inanimate sentences distributed in a Latin Square design, as illustrated
in Table 2. Sentences were divided into three clauses. The second clause was
the critical segment, containing either an inchoative, a transitive animate or
a transitive inanimate verb structure. The 15 experimental sentences were
randomly interspersed among 30 fillers.
Cond/
Seg

Seg 1

Seg 2

Seg 3

Question

IN

Dear retehera,

tai wadeb butumy

rasra,

dear rerajuara..

wadeb rasra

and I screamed

my hand burned

hawyy wadeb
risra

I didnt pay attention

then my hand got all

burned
TA

TI

Dear retehera,

tai hawyy wadeb risra

dear rerajuara..

I didnt pay attention

the woman burned my

hand

and I screamed

Dear retehera,

tai heoty wadeb risra

dear rerajuara..

heoty wadeb risra

I didnt pay attention

the fire burned my hand

and I screamed

fire burned my hand

woman burned my
hand

Table 2: Sample of materials used in Experiment 1

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Procedures
Procedures were identical to those of Experiment 1.
Results
Error rates in the comprehension questions did not differ reliably between
all conditions (34% for IN, 33% for TA and 27% for TI). As predicted, average
reading times did not differ significantly in the critical area (second segment)
between IN and TA (t (94)=0,22;p=0,82 ns). Reading times were also not
significantly different between IN and TI, [t(94)=1,36;p=0,17 ns].TA and TI reading
times did not exhibit any significant differences [t(94)=1,4;p=0,16 ns]. Analyses of
the reading times for segments 1 and 3 revealed no reliable differences between
conditions (all ps > 0.1).

Figure 2 Average Reading times in Experiment 2

Discussion
Unlike the Portuguese results obtained in Experiment 1, in Karaj, where
inchoatives are morphologically marked in the verb forms, no significant
differences were observed between the conditions. We take these results to be
indicative of the psychological reality of the morphological computation in online processing even though inchoatives may be derivationally more complex
than transitives, morphological markings of inchoatives can make up for their
syntactic complexity and facilitate their processing.
3.3. Experiment 3 Karaja/BP late bilinguals tested in BP
As in Experiment 1, there were three conditions, namely, an inchoative

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structure (IN), a transitive animate structure (TA) and a transitive inanimate

structure (TI). Again the experimental task was the noncumulative self paced
reading paradigm coupled with a sentence final yes/no comprehension question.
If Karaja subjects transfer their facilitation in the reading of inchoative structures
in their L1 to their L2, their performance in this experiment should be similar to
their performance in Experiment 2.
Method
Participants:
Participants in the study were 12 high school teachers and students in
the Damiana da Cunha school in the Karaja village of Santa Isabel do Morro
(Hawal), in the Bananal Island, state of Tocantins. They were all native speakers
of Karaja, literate in both Karaja and BP, late bilinguals in BP, and their mean
age was 24. Even though they belonged to the same pool of subjects who
participated in experiment 2, they were not the same subjects that took part in
that experiment.
Materials:
The stimuli were the same used in Experiment 1: 15 triads of BP inchoative,
transitive animate and transitive inanimate sentences distributed in a Latin Square
design, as illustrated in Figure 1. Sentences were divided into three clauses.
The second clause was the critical segment, containing either an inchoative, a
transitive animate or a transitive inanimate verb structure. The 15 experimental
sentences were randomly interspersed among 30 fillers.
Procedures:
Procedures were identical to those in Experiment 1.
Results
Error rates in the comprehension questions did not differ reliably between
all conditions (27% for IN, 31% for TA and 25% for TI). Contrary to our initial
prediction, average reading times were significantly higher in IN than in TI [t
(94)=3,58;p=0,0005***]. Reading times in IN were also significantly higher than in
TI [t(94)=2,11;p=0,037*]. TA and TI reading times did not exhibit any significant
differences [t(94)=1,7;p=0,09 ns]. Analyses of the reading times for segments 1
and 3 revealed no reliable differences between conditions (all ps > 0.1).

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Figure 3 Average Reading times in Experiment 3

Discussion
Even though the Karaja reading BP displayed higher reading times overall
than BP readers who took experiment 1, they exhibited an equivalent profile as
the native BP speakers of experiment 1: inchoatives were harder to process
than their transitive counterparts. Therefore, the Karaja subjects reading BP did
not replicate the performance of Karaja subjects reading Karaja, in which the
inchoative condition did not differ significantly from the transitives. This pattern of
results suggests that the facilitation effect of the inchoative morphology in Karaja
was not transferred to L2.
4. Conclusions
This article has presented experimental evidence on the processing of BP
and Karaja causative alternation structures that lead us to the following main
conclusions:
1. The morphological marking of inchoatives can make up for their syntactic
complexity, facilitating their on-line processing. Results are taken to support the
psychological reality of the morphological computation in comprehension.
2. Karaja late bilinguals do not transfer their morphological facilitation
in Karaja to Portuguese. Results demonstrated that facilitation did not occur
neither in L1 nor in L2 Portuguese, suggesting that morphology facilitation is not
transferred from a morphologically marked L1 to an unmarked L2 in the bilingual
mind.

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