On the Causative Construction
Humanities
Syntax V
The work to be presented here is the result of the collaborative efforts of ten students of syntax. The aim here—as it is of all syntactic analyses—is to be able to account for a construction while working within the domain of a certain syntactic theory, upholding the tenets of said theory, making minimal adjustments to it only as necessary, and creating little to no stipulation. Here, this analysis is presented under a Minimalist framework (Chomsky, 1993).
To narrow the focus, the specific goal of the present analysis is to capture the syntax of causatives, which are sentences of the form Bill made John wash the dishes. There are two verbs in this construction: the causative verb, which here is make (though the the other causative verbs have and let will also be examined) and what is known as the main verb, here wash. Of interest in these constructions is that there is not only the main action being performed—the washing that is done by John—but that there is an additional event: that Bill is causing (or bringing about) the action of John washing dishes.
There is an additional verb, get, which seems to pattern like these causative verbs but has some additional properties such that it also patterns like passive constructions. The sentence Bill got John arrested certainly seems to be of the same form as the make causative sentence. This sentence, however, also permits the following addition: Bill got John arrested by the police. This addition, which is called the by-phrase, is something that is also seen in passive constructions. For example, an active form of a sentence is The police arrested John while the passive is John was arrested by the police; here, what is the subject in the passive is the object in the active, and the subject of the active is now housed in this by-phrase in the passive. While there is this rearrangement, the relationship between what is being done and who is doing it is crucially retained; the police are still the participants doing the arresting and John is always the participant being arrested. This is not possible for the causative verbs make, let, and have (*John made Sally arrested by the police). Returning to the structure with get, an analysis must account for get having the same surface distribution as other causative verbs, but additionally permitting this passivization that is not possible with the others.
Moving from this more descriptive picture to one that is more theoretical, the objective is as follows: The analysis that will be explicated will address these various causative verbs, the structures associated with them, and how make, let, and have are distinct from get. In a general sense, these constructions are interesting in that they seem to complicate a picture of verbal structures enumerated by a classical understanding of syntax. Not only are there verbs, but there are also light verbs—an extension of the verb within a theoretical representation of syntax. These light verbs are thought to control the voice of the sentence (if the sentence is active or passive); the passive be, as seen in John was arrested by the police, is such a light verb. Causatives are therefore of great consequence to one’s understanding of so-called light verbs, as the verb get seems passive in nature. The two verbs get and be should then, intuitively, have similar syntactic constructions. Proposed in this paper will be that get, like passive be, is a light verb. Make, let, and have differ from get in that they do not originate in this same light verb position, but higher in the structure. To account for the similarity in surface distribution of these causative verbs, it is posited that get originates as a light verb and moves to occupy the same position as these other causative verbs. This account is able to succeed then in capturing the nuances of the different causative verbs with a structural account, uniting their position and cause-like elements while also retaining particular similarities to the passive in the case of get.
