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Unpublished Paper
Culminating and non-culminating accomplishments in Malagasy
(2017)
  • Ileana Paul
  • Baholisoa Simone Ralalaoherivony, Université d'Antananarivo
  • Henriëtte de Swart, Utrecht University
Abstract
Malagasy is a language with non-culminating accomplishments. There is, however, a specific prefix (maha-), which appears to entail culmination. Moreover, verbs prefixed with maha- display a range of interpretations: causative, abilitive, ‘manage to’, and unintentionality. This paper accounts for these two aspects of this prefix with a unified semantic analysis.  In particular, maha- encodes double prevention, as proposed by Wolff (2007, 2014) for English predicates like enable. The double prevention configuration is associated with a circumstantial modal base, which leads to culminating readings in the past and future. As such, this paper supports a more fine-grained theory of causation.
Keywords
  • Malagasy,
  • culmination,
  • causation,
  • modality
Publication Date
Winter January 1, 2017
Citation Information
Ileana Paul, Baholisoa Simone Ralalaoherivony and Henriëtte de Swart. "Culminating and non-culminating accomplishments in Malagasy" (2017)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ileanapaul/62/