Causee Case in Gipuzkoan Basque

This paper examines this the case properties of causees in Gipuzkoan Basque and proposes a syntactic model to explain these case properties. In Gipuzkoan Basque, the subjects of transitive and unergative predicates receive dative case when embedded in a causative, whereas the subjects of unaccusatives receive absolutive (de Rijk 2008). This pattern differs from other dialects of Basque, with the consequence that syntactic models of causatives used for other Basque dialects do not capture this alternation well. I look at two of these models used for other dialects and show that they can’t correctly explain the case properties of Gipuzkoan causees, before proposing my own model. In particular, I propose that in Gipuzkoan causatives external arguments are introduced in an applicative phrase (ApplP), where they receive inherent dative case, whereas internal arguments are introduced as the complement of the verb root, where they receive structural absolutive case from v.