Causation, Obligation, and Argument Structure: On the Nature of Little v

Abstract

As shown by Kayne (1975), Romance causatives with faire fall into two classes, faire infinitif (FI) and faire par (FP). We argue from Italian data that the properties of the two classes depend on the nature of the complement of fare:FI embeds a vP, FP a nominalized VP. The syntactic and semantic characteristics of these complements account straightforwardly for well-known differences between FI and FP, including the previously untreated “obligation” requirement in FI, absent in FP. Our analysis also accounts for another subtle restriction on the formation of FP: the existence of an animacy requirement on the subject of fare, absent in FI. Finally, we argue that only FP can undergo passivization; this accounts for a previously unobserved asymmetry in passivizability of causatives of unergative and unaccusative intransitive verbs.

On long-distance theta-role assignment

“…42a), and (ii) IP or active causatives (cf. 42b) (see, among many others, Kayne, 1969;Bordelois, 1974;Burzio, 1986;Trevinõ, 1992Trevinõ, , 1994Folli and Harley, 2007;Tubino Blanco, 2011;Pujalte, 2013;Saab, 2014) I will follow here the syntactic approach to active causatives proposed by Pujalte (2013), according to which this type instantiates the abstract structure in (43).…”

Some properties of light verbs in code-switching

“…The phase theory, coupled with independently motivated analyses of Romance causatives (Guasti, 1992;López, 2001;Folli and Harley, 2007) provides a straightforward account of the difference between (49) and (50). Causative verbs may select for a VP or for a vP, which includes an external argument.…”

A Defective Auxiliary in Danish

“…10 This is exactly the contribution that v makes to the meaning of the predicate (Hale andKeyser 1993, Kratzer 1996), and so light verbs are perfect candidates to realize v overtly, as they indeed have been argued to do in a number of different languages, e.g. French and Italian (Folli and Harley 2007), Hindi-Urdu (Butt and Ramchand 2005), Persian (Megerdoomian 2002, Folli et al 2005, and Yiddish (Diesing 1998). …”