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:
“Our frigate takes fire,
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck and the fighting done?
Now I laugh content for I hear the voice of my little captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)