The noncausal/causal alternation in African languages: An introduction

In this introduction to the special issue on the noncausal/causal alternation in African languages, we lay the foundation for the contributions that follow. We provide an overview of the languages that are discussed in the contributions. We present a definition of the noncausal/causal alternation, and a summary of the typological literature on this alternation. We outline two dominant typologies of so-called “correspondence types” and discuss the methodology for investigating the noncausal/causal alternation. The introduction closes with summaries of the eight contributions.