Goals in the Ditransitive Construction vs. Syntactic Subject Causees in the Morphological Causative

This paper examines why there arise syntactic differences between ditransitive goals (i.e., indirect objects (IOs)) and syntactic subject causees of the morphological causative in spite of their seemingly identical structure. In the IO-direct object (DO) order, the reflexive DO isn t bound by the IO and the DO cannot take scope over the IO, whereas in the syntactic subject causee-DO order, the reflexive DO can be construed to be bound by the causee and there is no scope freezing effect of the DO over the causee: that is, this means that the causee occurs as a syntactic subject in [Spec, vP] in that the subject can bind the reflexive DO and the DO can take scope over the subject (cf. Song 2005). Based on these observations, this paper proposes that the surface position of the accusative-marked causees and goals should be a structural Case-checked position, which triggers their overt movement to A-position. It is assumed in this paper that the accusative-marked syntactic subject causee in the morphological causative undergoes overt object shift from A-position (i.e., lower [Spec, vP]) to the higher shifted A-position in the vP-shell structure (cf. Jeong 2002, Song 2005); hence, no violation of A-chain.