The Function of the Finnish Morphological Causative Construction

In this study we examined the causative construction with the verb morphologically derived from the transitive verb (henceforth transitive MC construction) and particularly focused on the syntactic status of the noun phrase which indicates the agent of the caused event, the causee (Ce). Ce takes the oblique case (adessive) in the transitive MC construction.

Comparing the transitive MC construction with the other two types of analytic causative constructions (AC) in Finnish (where Ce takes the grammatical case), we found out two sharp differences in the usage of these constructions:

1. There is a strong tendency for transitive MC construction not to express the Ce overtly.
2. In the transitive MC construction, if Ce is not expressed overtly, it is always indefinite;
   On the other hand, in the ACs with no overt Ce, in more than the half of the cases the referent of the Ce is recoverable from the context preceding the AC.

These facts indicate that the Ce of the transitive MC construction is optional and not the obligatory element of the causative construction. This contradicts the standard typological treatment of causative consruction, which assumes that the causative construction has always one more syntactic arguments than its non-causative counterpart. The above observation thus suggests that, at least in Finnish MC construction, the marking of causative and the increase of the number of verb argument are to be treated separately.