Causative is phenomenon of language that occurs in various ways and processes.

It involves two arguments where one influences the other to carry out the event implied
by the predicate. That is, the event would not take place if the causer did not coerce the
cause. Simply, causative is the addition of new subject argument which can cause
something to the patient. It employs a process of causation i.e. we assume that there is
an external factor, which has forced the normal situation to cause something.

There are 2 types of Causative construction:

1. Lexical Causative.
Lexical Causative is the one where we have a lexical verb form, which exists
semantically as opposed to the non-causative form of the verb.
Example:
i. They feed him doughnuts (www.puertorico-herald.org, crawled on
21/11/2016)

FEED = CAUSE(x, (EAT, y))

In the sentence they make him or cause him to eat doughnuts. Hence,
causativization has the effect of increasing the valency of words. Another easy
example for lexical causative:

ii. The cat killed the mouse (www.ajol.info, crawled on 2/11/2019)

KILL = CAUSE(x, (DIE,y))

This could be means the cat causing the mouse die by killing it. The causative
construction also increasing the valency of words.

2. Morphological Causative
Morphological causative is the one that have some morphemes which get
attached to the verb root or stem and transform the verb into a causative verb
form. In simple way, causative could be happened by adding affixes to the verb
root which could cause something to the patient in the sentence.
 There are some English affixes which have causative role such as ~ize as in
modernize, ~en as in en-large, ~ify as in simplify etc.
Example:
iii. The giant is awake → The giant awaken by me
(www.newrichmond-news.com, crawled on 20/11/2016)

AWAKE(trans verb) AWAKEN(trans verb, TO CAUSE STOP SLEEPING)

iv. Everyone’s life is simple → I will simplify everyone’s life

(www.suncookvalleysun.com, crawled on 06/11/2016)

SIMPLE(adj) SIMPLIFY(verb, TO CAUSE LIFE EASIER)

The examples show how addition of causative suffix could increases the valency
of a word. The iv example show that causative suffix also change adjective into
transitive verb and add more argument to the sentence. In sum, verbs may carry
morphological markings that determine how their arguments must be expressed on the
level of syntactic structure. The syntactic valency of verbs may be affected by
morphology.

REFERENCES

Bauer, L. 1983. English Word-formation. Cambridge: CUP

Katamba, F. 1993. Morphology. London: Macmillan.
Imoh, Philip M. 2013. Causative Constructions: A Descriptive Analysis. UJAH: Unizik
Journal of Arts and Humanities
 MORPHOLOGY
(MORPHOSYNTAX: CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTION)

DEWA AYU MARTA DEWI

1980111021

LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF ARTS

UDAYANA UNIVERSITY

DENPASAR