Invisible but present: implicit causees in the indirect causatives of Catalan, Occitan and Basque

Abstract

In this article we analyse the indirect causatives of Catalan, Aranese (Occitan) and Basque. In these constructions, the causee is implicit, but acts like the explicit causee of faire-infinitive causatives (Kayne 1975). We will show that this argument is not only semantically present, but also syntactically active, as can be deduced from its behaviour regarding the following criteria: (i) binding of an inalienable anaphoric phrase; (ii) control of secondary predicates; (iii) control of the subject of a non-finite causative structure; (iv) blocking of the clitic or the agreement of any other dative argument. For this reason, the implicit causee is an argument and not an adjunct, unlike the causer, which is marked by the preposition per of the faire-par construction type (Kayne 1975) of Catalan (Fontich 2021) and Occitan.