The focus of the presented contrastive analysis are non-finite complement constructions with the meaning of causation. In English they are found at the intersection of different frameworks under different terms: ‘Accusativus cum Infinitivo’, ‘object control constructions’, ‘equi-type structures’, ‘small clauses’. The case study prefers a theory-neutral term ‘causative construction’. Causative constructions encode one event as the argument of a second event. Only certain predicates allow events as arguments, hence complement-taking predicates or CTPs (Noonan 2007, p. 53; Croft 2022, pp. 551-558).
The comparison of English causative constructions with Ukrainian ones provides the novelty of this research, following the claims that Construction Grammar beyond English has “shown its usefulness and power in the description” (Östman & Fried 2004, p.7; Fried 2017, pp. 243-244). The use of ‘construction’ as a comparative concept is postulated by Croft and Boas (Croft 2022, p.17; Boas 2010, p. 16).
To attain “sufficient frequency” (Goldberg 2006, p. 5; also Horsch 2023b, pp. 18-19) for the analysis of studied constructions in two languages, one should harvest data from corpora. Experts in the sphere of corpus-based contrastive studies claim that a balanced, bidirectional parallel corpus is well suited for this purpose, providing a necessary tertium comparationis (TC) (Hasselgård 2020; cf. Ebeling and Ebeling 2020). We argue that the researcher can use two separate corpora (in our case COCA and GRAC (General Regionally Annotated Corpus, so far, the largest and the most representative corpus of Modern Ukrainian)), provided that he/she makes a correct TC choice, and applies a chosen pattern for the query built. In this study the ‘construction’ serves as the TC. Meso-constructions (partly schematic, partly substantive constructions) play an important role in the taxonomic constructional network, being intermediate between micro-constructions (specific, substantive instances) and macro-constructions (abstract schematic constructional templates) (Hoffman et. al 2019, p. 26; Horsch, 2023a, pp.704-706), therefore the principal claim of this paper is that meso-constructions show a greater potential as TC, allowing to build the search queries more efficiently, being a viable solution in a cross-linguistic research. Macro-constructions appeared to be less efficient. Consider the following meso-constructions in English and in Ukrainian: in English: N1 cause [N2 Infinitive (N3)], in Ukrainian: N1 prymusyty (cause) [N2 Infinitive (N3)] (examples 1, 2):
(1) Every talk has caused me to think about some topic a new way. (BLOG: http://lfb.org/today/the-center-of-the-conspiracy/ 2012)
(2) Проста рекламна вивіска змусить вас посміхнутися. (Онлайн-ЗМІ: «Новини Хмельницького «Є», 2016)
Prosta reklamna vyviska zmusytʹ vas posmikhnutysya.
simple advertising sign cause/make FUT SG Pronoun ACC SG INFINITIVE
‘A simple advertising sign will make you smile’. (Online media: “News of Khmelnytsky “Ye”, 2016)
There is a larger range of causative constructions in English, as revealed by data, in comparison to Ukrainian with more lexical fillers/CTPs, that is verbs licensing the appearance of the non-finite complement construction as an argument; the list of CTPs was compiled based on the thesaurus principle. The filler types of the English causative construction include the Infinitive, Participle I and II as non-finites, as well as Nominal (adjective/noun) (consider examples 3-5), whereas in Ukrainian only the Infinitive is possible:
(3) If projects are off to a strong start, he’ll hopefully keep them moving. (NEWS: Washington Post, 2011)
(4) You don’t believe setting foot into the forest would actually get us killed. (MOV: Bats: Human Harvest, 2007)
(5) Despite what anybody else says, he makes me happy. (BLOG http://stayonthego.com/nashville/featured/love-on-top, 2012)
Table 1 provides the results of the obtained corpus data that illustrate the differences of causative constructions productivity in English and Ukrainian.
| Causative construction with | English (quantity of CTPs) | Relative frequency per million | Ukrainian (quantity of CTPs) | Relative frequency per million |
| Infinitive | 23 | 241.153 | 7 | 81.52 |
| Participle I | 8 | 18.929 | - | |
| Participle II | 4 | 22.690 | - | |
| Nominal (adjective/noun) | 6 | 123.628 | - |
| Table 1. Number of CTPs as lexical fillers, introducing each subtype of causative constructions in English and Ukrainian |
The efficiency of meso-constructions as TC is, thus, made vivid.
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