Verbs and Situations

Causatives
• Causative sentence is a situation caused by whatever
the subject noun phrase refers to, and the caused
situation is described by the embedded clause. The
embedded clause results in the entailment.
• Example: The lecturer made the students submit the
semantics paper.
• The lecturer: a noun phrase
• The embedded clause/entailment: The students
submitted the semantic paper.
 Causative Verbs
• The causative verbs include:
Make, get, have, force, cause, prevent, allow,
etc.
 Direct and Indirect Causations
• Direct causation: a causative relation between
contiguous events: no third event is allowed to
intervene. Example: John Killed Bill.
• Indirect causation: there is third event that
intervenes. Example: John caused Bill to die.
(John might ask someone other than he
himself to kill Bill).
 Entailment in Causatives
a. John killed Bill (direct causation)
b. John made Bill to die (indirect causation)
c. Bill was dead (entailment)
Note: a and b can entail c. a can entail b. but b
cannot entail a.
Kinds of one noun-clause of causative with an
entailment from each
 Types of intransitive verbs
• Unergative verb: it requires a subject that is
consciously responsible for what happens.
Example: dance, walk, work, run, etc.
• Unaccusative verb:the subject is affected by
the action but does not account as responsible
for it. Example: bend, break, dry, hang, hurt,
lean, pop, spill, split, turn, etc.
 Discuss!
• Question no 1 – 3 page 75 – 76.