Abstract

Recent syntactic approaches to event structure differ in whether causative semantics are introduced by a designated syntactic head (e.g. v caus; Pylkkänen 2008; Harley 2017) or is interpreted configurationally (Ramchand 2008; Alexiadou et al. 2015; Wood & Marantz 2017). The examination of the morphosyntactic properties of Samoan faʻa-causatives reveals a ‘bundling paradox’ in that faʻa- appears to introduce an agent role while co-occuring with Voice morphology—a pattern which is not predicted by Caus0-approaches (Harley 2017). Instead, this chapter develops an account that analyzes causative morphology like faʻa- as the bi-directionally spell-out of the verbalizer v which is sensitive to the presence of Voice in bi-eventive configurations (cf. Embick 2010). Therefore, this chapter not only provides a first syntactic investigation of faʻa-causatives in Samoan, but also adds a new cross-linguistic perspective to the ongoing discussion of causatives at the syntax-semantics interface.

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