Causal–noncausal verb alternations in Norwegian

This paper examines the typological characteristics of causal–noncausal verb alternations in Norwegian. To be more specific, the direction of formal basic–derived relationships in 31 causal–noncausal verb pairs in Norwegian is analyzed based on the verb list proposed by Haspelmath (1993). Moreover, a comparison is made between Norwegian and other Germanic languages. There are three major findings that this paper presents. First, Norwegian shows a great propensity for anticausative and labile coding. Second, Norwegian is similar to German in terms of the propensity for anticausative and labile coding. By contrast, English shows a dominant preference for labile coding, and Swedish for anticausative coding. Third, the direction of formal derivation in Norwegian can be accounted for in terms of the “spontaneity scale” proposed by Haspelmath (2016): different coding types are chosen depending on how spontaneously the events each noncausal verb denotes are likely to occur.