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. | ||||
Read more about this topic: Causative
Famous quotes containing the word voice:
“What is this beast, she thought,
with muscles on his arms
like a bag of snakes?
What is this moss on his legs?
What prickly plant grows on his cheeks?
What is this voice as deep as a dog?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
Related Subjects
Related Phrases
Related Words