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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 30, Frankfurt
Edited by Ingo Feldhausen, Martin Elsig, Imme Kuchenbrandt and Mareike Neuhaus
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15] 2019
► pp. 313–332

Chapter 16
Nominal and verbal events in Romance causative constructions

Evidence from Italian

ORCID logo | Université de Nantes/LLING

Romance syntactic causative constructions have mixed properties that make it difficult to decide about their monoclausal or biclausal structure (Rizzi 1976, Guasti 1996, a.o.).The aim of this study is to contribute to the debate by providing an analysis of these constructions in Italian against the background of complex predicate formation. I address the issue of the syntactic category of the complement of fare in syntactic causatives by comparing them to complex predicates in Italian. I show that, contrary to what has been claimed in recent analyses, syntactic causatives are bieventive constructions where the causative verb embeds a complex clause, and I offer an account of their surface differences in terms of Voice alternation.

Keywords: causatives, complex predicates, nominalisations, causal structures
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Causative structures and complex predicate formation
    • 2.1Syntactic causatives
      • 2.1.1EN – causatives
    • 2.2Interim summary
  • 3.Verbal and nominal events
    • 3.1Event nominalisations in Italian and French
    • 3.2The semantics of (in)direct causation
  • 4.An alternant account
    • 4.1Passive voice
    • 4.2Anticausative alternation
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.15.16don
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