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:
“The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the special interests. It is not allowed to have a voice of its own. It is told at every move, “Don’t do that, You will interfere with our prosperity.” And when we ask: “where is our prosperity lodged?” a certain group of gentlemen say, “With us.””
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)