Dispositional causation

Abstract

There are a number of phenomena where an apparent animacy requirement exceptionally admits some inanimate causers as felicitous. In this paper I argue that these should be explained not by a syntactically visible animacy feature but rather by a “what-can-cause-what” approach. In this kind of approach, judgments of felicity occur exactly when, conceptually speaking, the causing eventuality is able to cause the effect eventuality. I show how a what-can-cause-what approach for futurates and have causatives explains their felicitous inanimate causer exceptions, as well as other behavior such as interactions with aspect, using a novel notion of “dispositional causation”. The dispositions in question include both intentions of animate entities and physical tendencies. Dispositions, as well as the holders of dispositions and the causal relation, can either be represented explicitly in the syntactic structure, or can be merely implicitly available, through the accommodation of a conceptual model of dispositional structure.

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