Click here to download the paper
Hiaki contains two verbal suffixes which explicitly indicate causation. One of these suffixes means ‘make’, as in the following examples:
1. Uu maehto uka ili hamutta noktua.
Uu maehto uka ili hamut-ta nok-tua
The teacher the little girl-obj speak-caus
“The teacher is making the little girl speak.”
2. Juan uka yoemta vachita ettuak.
Juan uka yoem-ta vachi-ta et-tua-k
Juan the man-obj corn-obj plant-caus-prf
“Juan made the man plant corn.”
Instead of using a separate verb to express causation, like ‘make’, Hiaki uses the suffix -tua. When -tua is attached to a verb, it means ‘(someone) made (someone else) verb’.
Hiaki also has another causative suffix, -tevo. This suffix is used more like the English verb ‘have’ is used, when ‘have’ means ’caused’ or ‘obliged’. Look at the following example, and compare it to 2. above:
3. Maria vachita ettevok.
Maria vachi-ta et-tevo-k
Maria corn-obj plant-caus2-prf
“Maria is having the corn planted.”
The crucial difference between -tevo and -tua is that with -tua, the person who is being made to do something has to be mentioned in the sentence, while with -tevo, the person who is being made to do something cannot be mentioned in the sentence. With -tevo, it is understood that someone is being made to do something, but that person cannot be usually identified.
In this paper, the team analyzes cases with -tevo where the person doing the action can be identified, which is not usual.