Blocking and Japanese Causatives

A principle is proposed that organizes verbs in the lexicon according to their meaning and the number of arguments they require. This principle, which we call the Paradigmatic Structure, acts as a filter for the permanent lexicon, letting all verb stems into the lexicon but only some morphological derivatives. The effects of the Paradigmatic Structure are observed in blocking, in which some but not all morphological derivatives manifest processes regularly associated with verb stems. The Paradigmatic Structure is motivated on the basis of the causative construction in Japanese. The fact that the causative construction is subject to the Paradigmatic Structure demonstrates its word-like characteristic. However, the construction also behaves in a way that suggests that it is syntactically complex. To capture both the word-like and the syntactic behaviors, it is proposed that a parallel structure is projected from the verb, one simplex and the other complex.