Causatives

Many languages have a special ‘causative’ affix, deriving a transitive from an intransitive verb (and a ditransitive verb from a transitive)—when -du¨r is added to o¨lmek ‘to die’ in Turkish, for instance, we get o¨ldu¨rmek ‘to kill’. English, with its sparse morphology, lacks this, but does have two other means of coding causation. The first is the productive use of a verb from the secondary type MAKING with an intransitive or transitive verb in a TO complement clause, as in the (b) examples below. The other involves using some (but by no means all) basically intransitive verbs in a transitive construction, with the intransitive subject (S) becoming transitive object (O), and a new ‘causer’ NP being brought in for transitive subject (A) function; this is illustrated in the (c) examples below.

(82a) The child sat on the mat

(82b) Mary made the child sit on the mat

(82c) Mary sat the child on the mat

(83a) The piece of metal bent

(83b) Mary made the piece of metal bend

(83c) Mary bent the piece of metal

(84a) The pauper bled

(84b) John made the pauper bleed

(84c) John bled the pauper

There is a difference in each case. Sentence (82c) implies that Mary picked up the child and put it sitting on the mat; for (82b) she could have got the child to sit by telling it to, or spanking it until it did. One could use (83c) when Mary changed the shape of the piece of metal with her hands, but (83b) when she heated it over a fire, so that it changed shape. Hearing (84c) one might presume that John was a doctor who drew blood from the pauper in a scientific manner to relieve some medical condition; for (84b) John might be a blackguard who bashed the pauper with a piece of lead pipe until he began to bleed.

The (c) sentences—a basically intransitive verb used transitively—imply careful and direct manipulation, whereas the periphrastic make constructions imply some more indirect means. (There are also of course semantic differences between the various verbs that can be used in (b) constructions—make, cause, force, etc.)

For most intransitive/transitive verb pairs with intransitive S = transitive O—such as sit, bend and bleed—native speakers pick the intransitive sense as primary. However, there are some S=O pairs for which the transitive sense is generally considered primary, e.g. I broke the vase, The vase broke.

Other verbs can be used both transitively and intransitively but with S = A, rather than S = O, e.g. He doesn’t smoke and He doesn’t smoke a pipe; I’ve eaten and I’ve eaten lunch; They are playing and They are playing hopscotch. These could perhaps be regarded as transitive verbs that may omit an object NP under certain specific conditions. Note that some verbs (such as take, hit, make, prefer) can only omit an object NP under very special circumstances (e.g. when contrasted with another verb, as in He takes more than he gives), and others may do so only when the object can be inferred from the context or from the previous discourse, e.g. You choose!.