causative
Sign in to saveIn linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operation that indicates that a subject either causes someone or something else to do or be something or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event. Normally, it brings in a new argument (the causer), A, into a transitive clause, with the original subject S becoming the object O.
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65 sectionsContents
- Terminology
- Devices
- Lexical
- One word
- Irregular stem change
- Two words
- Morphological
- Two verbs in one predicate
- Periphrastic constructions
- Semantics
- Relationship between devices and semantics
- Animacy of the object
- Finite and non-finite verbs
- Dixon's prototypes
- Syntax
- Intransitives
- Transitives
- Ditransitives
- Double causatives
- Other topics
- Causative (repetitive)
- Causative voice
- Causal case
- Causal-final case
- Literature
- Shibatani
- Comrie
- Song
- Talmy
- Indo-European languages
- Germanic languages
- Proto-Germanic
- English
- Sanskrit
- Persian
- Lithuanian
- Latin
- Hindustani
- Bengali
- Basque
- Turkish
- Semitic languages
- Japanese
- Khmer
- Uralic languages
- Finnish
- Hungarian
- Austronesian languages
- Māori
- Philippine languages
- Malay
- Guaraní
- Uto-Aztecan languages
- Classical Nahuatl
- Athabaskan languages
- Hupa
- Central Alaskan Yup'ik
- Bantu languages
- Kinyarwanda
- Esperanto
- References
- Further reading
- General reading
- Causatives of a specific language
- External links
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operation that indicates that a subject either causes someone or something else to do or be something or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event. Normally, it brings in a new argument (the causer), A, into a transitive clause, with the original subject S becoming the object O.
All languages have ways to express causation but differ in the means. Most, if not all, languages have specific or lexical causative forms (such as English rise → raise, lie → lay, sit → set). Some languages also have morphological devices (such as inflection) that change verbs into their causative forms or change adjectives into verbs of becoming. Other languages employ periphrasis, with control verbs, idiomatic expressions or auxiliary verbs. There tends to be a link between how "compact" a causative device is and its semantic meaning.