Causative - Causative Voice

The causative voice is a grammatical voice promoting the oblique argument of a transitive verb to an actor argument. When the causative voice is applied to a verb, its valency increases by one. If, after the application of the grammatical voice, there are two actor arguments, one of them is obligatorily demoted to an oblique argument.

Japanese and Mongolian are examples of languages with the causative voice. The following are examples from Japanese:

Tanaka-kun ga atsume-ru
Tanaka nom collect-pres
Tanaka collects them.
Causative
Tanaka-kun ni atsume-sase-yō
Tanaka dat collect-caus-cohort
Let's get Tanaka to collect them.
kodomo ga hon o yom-u
children nom book acc read-pres
Children read books.
Causative
kodomo ni hon o yom-aseru
children dat book acc read-caus-pres
(They) make children read books.

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