Increase in Syntactic Productivity of thām Periphrastic Causative Construction
Keywords:
syntactic productivity, periphrastic causative construction, constructional change, causative verb thāmAbstract
Objectives: This research article aims to compare the periphrastic causative construction with a causative marker thām in texts written between 1897 AD and 1977 AD with this construction in present day Thai. The study also aims to analyze an increase in syntactic productivity of thām periphrastic causative construction from the texts of both eras.
Methods: The researcher collected historical data from Vajirayana Digital Library and current Thai data from the Thai National Corpus under the Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Mahachakri Sirindhorn (TNC). Data were gathered from informative and imaginative texts. All examples followed the specific structural pattern: noun phrase (1) + causative verb thām + noun phrase (2) + verb phrase.
Results: The analysis reveals two similarities between thām periphrastic causative constructions in the two periods: (1) the concreteness of the causer and causee, and (2) lexical aspects of caused events. The difference lies in the types of syntactic constructs that occur in the causer or noun phrase (1) slot. This difference reflects an increase in syntactic productivity as the types of syntactic constructs preceding the causative marker thām extended from noun phrases to verb phrases and clauses, respectively. This extension occurs through modulating the semantic properties of noun phrases, prototypical members of the CAUSER category. The CAUSER category, in this research, is organized in a prototypical structure, where a noun phrase is a prototypical member, a clause is a peripheral one, and a verb phrase falls in between since it possesses the semantic properties of both noun phrases and clauses.
Application of this study: This study contributes to enhancing the theoretical foundation for investigating Thai syntactic change from a diachronic construction grammar perspective, focusing on both the modifications in syntactic patterns and constructional meanings at the sentence level. Moreover, the findings have practical applications for teaching the Thai grammatical system to foreigners and for translation endeavors.
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