The Adessive Causee in the Finnish Causative Construction

The standard typological interpretation suggests that the causee in the Finnish causative construction with a causative verb (fi. kuratiivikausatiivi) in -(u)tta/-(y)ttä is demoted to the adessive NP if the causative verb (CV) is derived from a transitive verb. This would imply that CVs derived from transitive verbs should typically occur with an adessive causee (AC). Corpus data of written Standard Finnish shows, however, that ACs occur in less than 10 percent of the causative constructions with a CV derived from a transitive verb. Three factors are put forward to explain the low frequency of ACs in the Finnish causative construction:

(i)

There seems to be a semantic restriction on whether a causative verb can co-occur with the AC. Irrespective of the potential productivity of CV derivation, the actual number of the CVs which fulfill the restriction is rather limited;

(ii)

In most cases, the causee need not to be specified overtly, since the refetent of AC is retrievable from the outer sources;

(iii)

There is reason to assume that the AC is not fully established as a use of the Finnish adessive case. Rather, it is a variant of the instrumental adessive, which is one of the major uses of the adessive case in Finnish.