О СООТНОШЕНИИ ПРИЧИННЫХ И КАУЗАТИВНЫХ КОНСТРУКЦИЙ
CAUSAL VS CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

Summary/Abstract: The paper is a study into causal and causative constructions on cross-linguistic evidence. These constructions differ in their syntactic structure, where a causal construction is a two-clause construction typically built as a complex sentence,while a causative construction is a single-clause structure typically built as a simple sentence. Correspondingly, they are described in different grammar sections. At the same time, since both construction types characterize complex causative situations consisting of a situation of Cause and a situation of Cause-Determined Consequence, this provides a ground for their contrastive study. In complex sentences, a subordinate clause describes the cause, and a main clause – its consequence. Additionally, subordinate clauses include variously built causative relation markers. These are mostly conjunctions, though a verb morpheme or a verb clitic can fulfill this role as well. In causative constructions, causative relations can be marked by a morpheme inside a derivative causative verb form, or by a functional causative verb used in the predicate position. All verb arguments (except the first argument) in such constructions pose as situation participants,with the first argument position filled by the cause-situation agent (or the cause situation itself, where it has no participants). The fundamental difference between the two constructions is that the focus of a causal situation is the situation of Cause, while the focus of a causative situation is the situation of Consequence.

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