he goal of this study is to provide an inventory of the Analytic Causative constructions that were in use in Peninsular Spanish from the 12 th to the 16 th centuries from the constructional perspective of Cognitive Grammar. A detailed profile of each construction was made including its constructional schema along with relevant semantic, syntactic, lexical, pragmatic, and socio-cultural information. Fifteen different constructions involving the verbs mandar 'command', fazer 'make/do', and enviar 'send' were recorded and described. Moreover, several of the evolution paths constructions followed and the way constructions influenced and interacted with each other forming constructional networks were identified. The importance of semantic factors triggering change, as well as the role that prototypical exemplars, collocations, and analogy play in the emergence and conservation of constructions are discussed.

This paper investigates variation of lexical and analytic causatives in 15 European languages from the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic genera based on a multilingual parallel corpus of film subtitles. Using typological parameters of variation of causatives from the literature, this study tests which parameters are relevant for the choice between analytic and lexical causatives in the sample of languages. The main research question is whether the variation is constrained by one semantic dimension, namely, the conceptual integration of the causing and caused events, as suggested by previous research on iconicity in language, or whether several different semantic and syntactic factors are at play. To answer this question, I use an exploratory multivariate technique for categorical data (Multiple Correspondence Analysis with supplementary points) and conditional random forests, a nonparametric regression and classification method. The study demonstrates the importance of corpus data in testing typological hypotheses.

Les constructions causatives ont fait l’objet d’une attention particulière dans les études linguistiques, non seulement parce qu’elles font partie des innombrables expressions qui composent le système langagier humain, mais parce qu'elles reflètent également la mesure dans laquelle la cognition humaine perçoit et interprète la nature de la causation. Parmi les diverses causatives prédicatives, nous accordons une attention particulière aux causatives analytiques tirées des données anglaises et mandarines – deux langues qui comptent le plus grand nombre de locuteurs au monde : les constructions cause, make, have, shi (使) et rang (让). Guidé par le programme cartographique et minimaliste de la syntaxe générative, ce travail fournit, dans un premier temps, une recension des caractéristiques sémantico-syntaxiques qui permettent d’unir ou de distinguer les causatives de l’anglais et du mandarin. Ensuite, nous passons en revue les approches existantes qui discutent de la structure sous-jacente des constructions visées afin d’examiner à quel point ces approches pourraient nous guider dans la description des données interlinguistiques. Finalement, sur la base de ces approches, nous tentons de proposer une structure syntaxique plus universelle des causatives anglaises/mandarines tout en tenant compte des particularités sémantiques et des spécificités interlinguistiques. En plus d'adopter une configuration syntaxique monoclausale qui scinde la couche vP en deux, nous insistons également sur la nécessité d’introduire un trait évènementiel [contrôle] et de déterminer la valeur sémantique des verbes impliqués dans chaque structure causative anglaise/mandarine. / Causative constructions have received particular attention in linguistic studies, not only because they are part of the countless expressions that constitute the human language system, but also because they reflect the extent to which human cognition perceives and interprets the nature of causation. Among the various predicative causatives, this study focuses on analytic causatives drawn from English and Mandarin data - two languages with the largest number of speakers in the world: the cause, make, have, shi (使) and rang (让) constructions. Driven by the cartographic and minimalist program of generative syntax, this work first provides a survey of the semantic-syntactic features that unite or distinguish English and Mandarin causatives. Next, we review existing approaches that discuss the underlying structure of the target constructions to examine how these approaches might guide us in describing cross-linguistic data. Finally, based on these approaches, we attempt to propose a more universal syntactic structure of English/Mandarin causatives while considering semantic particularities and cross-linguistic specificities. In addition to adopting a monoclausal structure that splits the vP layer in two, we also insist on the need to introduce an event feature [control] and to determine the semantic value of verbs involved in each English/Mandarin causative structure.