Explanation
Causative formation comprises grammatical or word-forming procedures that present an event as brought about by an additional causer. The equivalent of “the child sleeps” becomes “someone makes or lets the child sleep”; linguistic form adds a cause and redistributes participant roles. Languages realise this movement through affixes, stem alternations, auxiliary constructions, or separate verbs, and may distinguish direct causation, permission, and indirect inducement. Causatives are therefore more than extended sentences. They model responsibility, control, and distance between impulse and outcome. The concept leads from an apparently autonomous event toward the question of who or what enables, initiates, or compels it, making otherwise implicit assumptions about causality grammatically observable.
Movement of thought
1. An event first appears with its existing participants, as a state, motion, or action without an explicitly named causer. 2. A causative form adds a causing participant and reassigns the former subject as affected participant or executing actor. 3. The construction indicates how directly, controllably, or permissively the cause is related to the resulting event. 4. A counter-test asks whether grammatical causativisation is present rather than temporal succession or a free claim about reasons. 5. The event returns as a relational scene in which agency and responsibility are distributed among causer, actor, and result.
Scientific use case
Linguistic typology, morphology, and syntax compare formal strategies, valency change, and semantic degrees from direct to permissive causation. Corpus analysis tests how constructions frame control and responsibility.
Example
“The conductor had the choir sing more quietly” adds an initiating participant to the singing while leaving contextual room between instruction, persuasion, and facilitation.
Counterexample
“After the rain, the garden bloomed” invites a causal inference but contains no grammatical causative construction. Temporal sequence and causal interpretation alone are insufficient.
Distinction
Distinguish causative formation from lexical causality, a free causal assertion, passive voice, and ordinary transitivisation. It systematically expands event structure by adding a causing or enabling participant.
Effect on thought and perception
Causative formation foregrounds the bringing about of an event and redistributes responsibility, control, and affectedness across participant roles.
Resonance
Behind one event another movement becomes audible: an impulse reaches a second participant and returns to the scene as a changed outcome.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Causative formation“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-DEP2-0010. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-DEP2-0010The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Historical background
Sapir's 1921 account illustrates causative formation through different formal mechanisms. In his analysis of a Fox form, a suffix expresses causality involving an animate object; elsewhere he describes causative duplication in the language named by his historical label Hottentot. These examples remain Sapir's analyses rather than newly elicited data. They establish no single universal shape for a causative.
How conceptual history changes the analysis
Causative function and morphological realization are distinct, and historical language labels require contextualization.
References for the historical section
- Edward Sapir, Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech (1921) · Chapter IV, Fox suffix analysis and the discussion of causative reduplication
Original English text read in the Gutenberg transcription. No first-coinage claim, full-book verification or automatic endorsement of the author’s 1921 language classifications and generalisations. Examples require modern descriptive checking before reuse as current language data.