Cover not available
Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2013: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' Amsterdam 2013
Edited by Enoch O. Aboh, Jeannette Schaeffer and Petra Sleeman
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 8] 2015
► pp. 21–38

Romance causatives and object shift

| UAB | CLT

The goal of this paper is to offer a unified analysis for a syntactic phenomenon found in the context of Spanish and Romanian causatives. The study focuses on causative constructions with ‘make’ that allow lexical subjects in a preverbal complement position and which present ECM effects. We claim that this preverbal subject position comes to be available in the two languages due to a more general property of these languages of having different word orders available in a sentence, and more specifically, due to the possibility of providing themselves with the VOS sequence through the strategy of object shift (as previously argued by Ordóñez 1998, 2007; Gallego 2007, 2010, 2013, for Spanish; and Alboiu 1999, 2002, for Romanian). We also argue that the availability of DOM with causatives in these two languages can be linked to the building of a dedicated position for the embedded subject through object shift.

Published online: 2 December 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.8.02ciu
References
Aissen, Judith
1974 “Verb Raising.” Linguistic Inquiry 5: 325-366.Google Scholar
1979 The Syntax of Causative Constructions. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Aissen, Judith, and David Perlmutter
1976 “Clause Reduction in Spanish.” In Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society (BLS 2), ed. by Henry Thompson, Kenneth Whistler, Vicki Edge, Jeri Jaeger, Ronya Javkin, Miriam Petruck, Christopher Smeall, and Robert D. Van Valin Jr., 1-30. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Alboiu, Gabriela
1999 “(De)-Focusing and Object Raising in Romanian.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics 44 (1): 1-22.Google Scholar
2002 The Features of Movement in Romanian. Bucureşti: Editura Universităţii Bucureşti.Google Scholar
Alsina, Alex
1992 “On the Argument Structure of Causatives.” Linguistic Inquiry 23: 517-555.Google Scholar
1996 The Role of Argument Structure in Grammar. Evidence from Romance. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
2002 “L’infinitiu.” In Gramàtica del català contemporani (vol. 3), ed. by Joan Solà, Maria-Rosa Lloret, Joan Mascaró, and Manuel Pérez Saldanya, 2389-2454. Barcelona: Empúries.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark
1988 Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana
2004 “Aspects of the Low IP Area.” In The Structure of CP and IP. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol. 2, ed. by Luigi Rizzi, 16-51. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bordelois, Ivonne
1974 The grammar of Spanish Causative Complements. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
1988 “Causatives: from Lexicon to Syntax.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6: 57-93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burzio, Luigi
1986 Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: Reidel. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cano Aguilar, Rafael
1981 Estructuras sintácticas transitivas en el español actual. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam
1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
2000 “Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework.” In Step by Step. Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik, ed. by Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka, 89-155. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
2001 “Derivation by Phase.” In Ken Hale: A life in language, ed. by Michael Kenstowicz, 1-52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
1998 “The Interaction of Passive, Causative, and ‘Restructuring’ in Romance.” University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 8: 29-51.Google Scholar
1999 Adverbs and Functional Heads. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2006 Restructuring and Functional Heads. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures (vol. 4). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ciutescu, Elena
2013a “Remarks on the Infinitival Subject of Perception Verb Complements: Evidence for Two Syntactic Configurations.” Revue Roumaine de Linguistique LVIII (3): 299-312.Google Scholar
2013b “Micro-parametric Variation in Romance Causative Constructions.” In Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics XV (2), ed. by Alexandra Cornilescu, 45-60. Bucureşti: Editura Universităţii Bucureşti.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard
1976 “The Syntax of Causative Constructions: Cross-language Similarities and Divergences.” In Syntax and Semantics. The Grammar of Causative Constructions, ed. by Masayoshi Shibatani, 261-312. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Costa, João, and Anabela Gonçalves
1999 “Minimal Projections: Evidence from Defective Constructions in European Portuguese.” CatWPL 7: 59-69.Google Scholar
Den Dikken, Marcel, and Ana Longenecker
2004 “Relating the Predicate to its Subject.” Ms., City University of New York.
Fernández-Ordóñez, Inés
1993 “Leísmo, laísmo y loísmo: estado de la cuestión.” In Los pronombres átonos, ed. by Olga Fernández Soriano, 63-96. Madrid: Taurus Universitaria.Google Scholar
Folli, Rafaella, and Heidi Harley
2007 “Causation, Obligation, and Argument Structure: On the Nature of Little v.” Linguistic Inquiry 38: 197-238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J
2007 Phase Theory and Parametric Variation. Ph.D. dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Google Scholar
2009 “Defective C-T in Romance.” Probus 21: 163-215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Phase Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “Object Shift in Romance.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31: 409-451. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodall, Grant
1987 Parallel Structures in Syntax. Coordination, Causatives, and Restructuring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Anabela
1999 Predicados complexos verbais em contextos de infinitivo não preposicionado do português europeu. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Lisbon.Google Scholar
Gramatica Limbii Române (GALR, II)
2008 Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române.
Guasti, Maria Teresa
1991 “Incorporation, Excorporation and Lexical Properties of Causative Heads.” The Linguistic Review 8: 209-232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1993 Causative and Perception Verbs: A Comparative Study. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.Google Scholar
1996 “Semantic Restrictions in Romance Causatives and the Incorporation Approach.” Linguistic Inquiry 27: 294-313.Google Scholar
1997 “Romance Causatives.” In The New Comparative Syntax, ed. by Liliane Haegeman, 124-144. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
2007 “Analytic Causatives.” In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax (vol.1), ed. by Martin Everaert, and Henk van Riemsdijk, 142-172. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hernanz, Maria Luisa
1999 “El infinitivo.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 2197-2356. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Ippolito, Michela
2000 “Remarks on the Argument Structure of Romance Causatives.” Ms, MIT.
Kayne, Richard
1975 French Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
2004 “Prepositions as Probes.” In Structures and Beyond. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures (vol. 3), ed. by Adriana Belletti, 192-212. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard
1999 Minimalist Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
2001 “Subjects, objects, and the EPP.” In Objects and Other Subjects: Grammatical Functions, Functional Categories, and Configurationality, ed. by William D. Davies, and Stanley Dubinsky, 103-121. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002 “Clause-mate Conditions Revisited”. Glot International 6: 94-96.Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard, and Mamoru Saito
1992 Move α: Conditions on its Applications and Outputs. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
1999 “On the Subject of Infinitives.” In Minimalist Analysis 7-24. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
López, Luis
2001 “The Causee and the Theory of Bare Phrase Structure.” In Current Issues in Spanish Syntax and Semantics, ed. by Javier Gutierrez-Rexach and Luis Silva-Villar, 221-241. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Locality and the Architecture of Syntactic Dependencies. London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Indefinite Objects. Scrambling, Choice Functions, and Differential Marking. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Marcantonio, Angela
1981 “The Distribution of a and da in Italian Causative Constructions.” Journal of Italian Linguistics 6: 1-33.Google Scholar
Martins, Ana Maria
2001 “On the Origin of the Portuguese Inflected Infinitive: A New Perspective on an Enduring Debate.” In Historical Linguistics 1999: Selected Papers from the 14th Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. by Laurel J. Brinton, 207-222. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 “Aspects of Infinitival Constructions in the History of Portuguese.” In Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospective and perspectives, ed. by Randall Gess, and Deborah Arteaga, 327–355. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moore, John
1996 Reduced Constructions in Spanish. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Nueva gramática de la lengua española (NGLE)
2010 Madrid: Espasa.
Ordóñez, Francisco
1998 “Post-verbal Asymmetries in Spanish.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16: 313–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 “Cartography of Postverbal Subjects in Spanish and Catalan.” In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2005: Selected Papers from ‘Going Romance’, Utrecht, ed. by Sergio Baauw, Frank A.C. Drijkoningen, and Manuela Pinto 8–10 December 2005, 259–280. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “Las causativas y la distribución del sujeto causado en el español de Río de la Plata y el español peninsular: evidencia para un núcleo aplicativo.” Paper presented at the Workshop Romania Nova ALFAL, August 2008. Montevideo, Uruguay.
Postal, Paul
1974 On Raising: One Rule of English grammar and its Theoretical Implications. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Reed, Lisa
1992 “Remarks on Word Order in Causative Constructions.” Linguistic Inquiry 23: 164-172.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi
1978 “A Restructuring Rule in Italian Syntax.” In Recent transformational studies in European languages, ed. by Samuel Jay Keyser, 113-158. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
1982 Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rouveret, Alain, and Jean-Roger Vergnaud
1980 “Specifying Reference to the Subject: French Causatives and Conditions on Representations.” Linguistic Inquiry 11: 97-202.Google Scholar
Rowlett, Paul
2007 “Cinque’s Functional Verbs in French.” Language Sciences 29: 755-786. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soares da Silva, Augusto
2004 “Verbos y construcciones causativas analíticas en portugués y en español.” Estudios de Lingüística: El verbo: 581-598.Google Scholar
2012 “Stages of Grammaticalization of Causative Verbs and Constructions in Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian.” Folia Linguistica 46(2): 513-552. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
The Grammar of Romanian
2013 Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Torrego, Esther
1998 The Dependencies of Objects. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
2010 “Variability in the Case Patterns of Causative Formation in Romance and Its Implications.” Linguistic Inquiry 41: 445-470. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treviño, Esthela
1992 “Subjects in Spanish Causative Constructions.” In Romance Languages and Modern Linguistic Theory, ed. by Paul Hirschbühler, and Konrad Koerner, 309-324. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1994 Las causativas del español con complemento de infinitivo. México: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Tubino Blanco, Mercedes
2011 Causatives in Minimalism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Villalba, Xavier
1992 “Case, Incorporation, and Economy: An approach to Causative Constructions.” Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics: 345-389.Google Scholar
1994 “Clitic Climbing in Causative Constructions.” Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics 3 (2): 123-152.Google Scholar
Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa
1985 “The Relation between Morphophonology and Morphosyntax: the Case of Romance Causatives.” Lingustic Inquiry 16: 247-289.Google Scholar