Causative
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A causative form, in linguistics, is an expression of an agent causing or forcing a patient to perform an action (or to be in a certain state).
All languages have ways to express causation, but they differ in the means. In some languages there are morphological devices (such as inflection) that change verbs into their causative forms, or adjectives into verbs of "becoming". Other languages employ periphrasis, with idiomatic expressions or auxiliary verbs. All languages also have lexical causative forms (such as English rise → raise).
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Morphological causativity
In Sanskrit, there is a causative form of the verb (n.ijanta), which is used when the subject of a clause forces or makes the object perform an action. The causative suffix -ay is attached to the verbal root (this may cause vowel sandhi to take place).
- bhū "to be, exist" → bhāv-ay; e. g. bhāvayati "he causes to be"
- khd "to eat" → khād-ay; e. g. khādayāmi "I cause to eat" = "I feed"
In Japanese there is a similar causative/obligative inflection:
- taberu "to eat" → tabesaseru "to make to eat, to feed"
- yomu "to read" → yomaseru "to make to read"
Causative forms are also found in some European languages such as Finnish.
- syödä "to eat" → syöttää "to feed"
- täysi "full" → täyttää "to fill"
- haihtua "to evaporate" → haihduttaa "to vaporize"
Notice that the causative suffix is often used irregularly and/or because of historical reasons, e.g. Finnish:
- olla "to be" → olettaa "to assume", not "to make exist"
- kirja- ancient "patterns (of e.g. embroidery)", but modern "book" → kirjoittaa "to write", not "to transform into books"
Periphrastic causativity
There are no regular causative inflections in English, nor in any of the major European languages, which resort to idiomatic uses of certain verbs like English make or have, French faire or laisser, or German lassen. For example:
- She made me eat the vegetables.
- I had John build the house.
Note that this type of structure is more complicated than the inflectional causative form exemplified in Sanskrit, since it has two verbs and three arguments: the first is the subject of the first verb; the second is the object of the first verb but also the subject of the second; and the third is the object of the second verb. These arguments can be exchanged using passive voice (in either verb), but the result can be cumbersome or even ungrammatical.
Other complex constructions include the use of subjunctive forms. Spanish uses these often, since it does not allow some simpler constructions that English permits.
- Él hizo que la siguieran. "He had her followed.", lit. "He had (things done so) that they would follow her."
- Hicimos que el perro comiera pescado. "We made the dog eat fish.", lit. "We did (things so) the dog would eat fish."
In the Romance languages, a number of verbs alternate between intransitive (semantically middle voice) and causative transitive, using a pseudo-reflexive clitic pronoun:
- Ella se despierta a las 7. "She wakes up at 7."
- Ella despierta a los niños. "She wakes up the children."
Lexical causativity
In many cases, a language simply uses a different lexical item to indicate a causative form. For example, the causative of English rise is raise, and the causative of eat is feed. English allows a notable freedom in verb valency, resulting in verbs like break, burn or awake, which may be causative or not (he burns it = he causes it to burn). Causativeness is therefore zero-marked in many English verbs.
In Japanese, there are a large number of verbs that alternate in various semi-regular patterns between intransitive forms and causative transitive forms, for example:
- agaru "to go up, to rise" → ageru "to raise"
- magaru "to turn" → mageru "to bend"
- kowareru "to be broken" → kowasu "to (cause to) break"
- kaeru "to go back" → kaesu "to send back"
Changes of state
In languages with stative verbs (equivalent to English adjectives), the acquisition of a quality, or changes of state, can be expressed with causatives in the same way as with regular verbs. For example, if there is a stative verb to be large, the causative will simply mean to enlarge, to make grow. The reflexive form of this causative can then be used to mean to enlarge oneself, or even as a middle voice, to grow.
Causative syntax
A causative form or phrase can be thought of as a valency-increasing voice operation, which adds one argument. If the original verb is intransitive, then the causative construction as a whole is transitive: to fall → to make (sbdy./sthg.) fall, to topple (sbdy./sthg.). If the original verb is transitive, the causative is ditransitive: to eat (sthg.) → to make (sbdy.) eat (sthg.), to feed (sthg.) to (sbdy.).
For the purpose of syntax, a derivation that turns an adjective or noun into a "verb of becoming" works the same as a causative construction for intransitive verbs. For example, in English the derivational suffixes -(i)fy can be thought of as a causative:
- simple → simplify = "to make simple", "to cause (sthg.) to become simple"
- object → objectify = "to make into an object", "to cause (sthg.) to become an object" (figuratively, that is)