Periphrastic causative in West Circassian

Abstract

This paper looks at a grammaticalized periphrastic causative construction in West Circassian. West Circassian is a polysynthetic language and expresses information largely through morphological means, which makes this construction all the more unusual. As interest in the complexities of polysynthetic languages grows, it is important to look at periphrastic strategies and syntactic operations in these languages beyond those governed by their morphosyntactic rules. Here, a causative construction based on the West Circassian ‘do’ exists alongside a highly productive morphological causative. Questions of how and why the appearance of such a construction is possible in West Circassian, but has not happened in closely related Abaza, are important and are a reminder that we should look beyond the complex morphosyntax of such languages to less studied and less conspicuous structures that can challenge our understanding of polysynthetic paradigms.