On Causers and Event Initiators:the representation of ext. causation in Ukrainian syntax

An important question in the argument structure and event structure research concerns the role that notions such as causer or event initiator play in the syntax, as well as the exact nature of their syntactic representation and licensing. One prominent line of research argues in favor of the Undifferentiated Initiator view, according to which Agents, non-volitional Causers and Natural Force arguments are all merged in Spec,VoiceP position (Ramchand 2008; Bruening 2013; Legate 2014; Wood 2017 i.a.; Cf. Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer 2006; 2015; Schäfer 2012). We present novel evidence in favor of the differential encoding of causation as separate from the external argument (EA)-introducing VoiceP layer, thus arguing against the Undifferentiated Initiator (UI) view. We examine a wide range of constructions in Ukrainian that bear on the matter, relying, i.a., on the Scope Freezing Diagnostic (SFD, per Antonyuk 2015; 2020; forthcoming i.a.), and drawing on relevant crosslinguistic evidence from Polish, Icelandic, Lithuanian, German, and English.

We show that all (Inanimate) causer arguments in Ukrainian are necessarily encoded as NPINSTR,  and provide evidence to suggest that apart from the differential encoding of EAs and non-volitional Causers, no further differentiation is observed, i.e., all Causers are merged in the Specifier of the same projection, as the sole argument of vCauseP. While this is in line with the three-layered verbal VoiceP--vP--√ architecture (Harley 2013; Pylkkänen 2002; 2008), a single Merge position for the more transparently causative Non-volitional Causers and Natural Force arguments as well as the far less obvious manner-of-action and Instrument arguments suggests the differentiation in thematic roles is viewed by syntax as less important compared to the shared causative component (Cf. Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Schäfer 2006; 2015; Schäfer 2012).

The account derives a range of Transitive Impersonal constructions in Ukrainian, whereby the internal argument is probed Accusative in the absence of an active Voice layer (see also Antonyuk forthcoming; Cf. esp. Legate 2014) and has a range of theoretical implications, including for the analysis of the Causative Alternation, to be discussed in this talk.