Nominal and verbal events in Romance causative constructions. Evidence from Italian.
Résumé
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.