The causee in the faire-Inf construction of European Portuguese

Abstract

One of the most interesting aspects of the faire-Inf construction in the Romance languages concerns the properties and the structural position of the causee. In the relevant literature, the most consensual hypothesis is that, in these languages, the causee is the grammatical subject of the embedded domain, although it occurs in a post-verbal position and is introduced by a preposition whenever it is dependent on a transitive verb (see Kayne, 1975; Raposo, 1981; Burzio, 1986; Villalba, 1992; Guasti, 1993, 1997, among others). The aim of this paper is to present some evidence against the idea that the causee, in European Portuguese, is the subject of the embedded domain. I will claim that this domain is the projection of a null affix that incausativizes the embedded verb, suspending the assignment of the external θ-role of this verb. In consequence, the causee is merged in the positions classically associated to objects.

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Gonçalves, A., (2002) “The causee in the faire-Inf construction of European Portuguese”, Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 1(2), 197-214. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/jpl.42

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Anabela Gonçalves (Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

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