Derivational Productivity in the Urdu Motion Verbs’ Causative Alternation

The present study explores the nature of derivational productivity with respect to the Urdu motion verbs’ causative alternation. More specifically, it addresses the questions of what types of derivational operations are involved in the causative alternation, how they differ in their productivity, and what factors constrain their productivity. The study collects data from multiple sources – lexical translation, Urdu Lughat, individual and dialogical introspection and acceptability judgment task – and frames data analysis in terms of Relational Morphology (Jackendoff & Audring, 2020). The study concludes that the main derivational processes involved in the Urdu motion verbs’ causative alternation include -a suffixing, base modification + -a suffixing and base modification in direct causatives, and -va suffixing and base modification + -va suffixing in indirect causatives; these derivational processes are gradient and dynamic with respect to their productivity; various sorts of constraints – phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic – are responsible for the variable nature of the derivational productivity. These findings carry implications for the nature of linguistic knowledge: it is more likely to be constraint-based rather than rule-based, which includes both productive and nonproductive aspects of linguistic competence