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The term causative refers to a class of verbs that encode both a cause and an ef- fect. Traditionally, this class referred in linguistics to verbs which are derived by a causative affix, and whose meaning can be rephrasable as ‘cause to’/‘cause to be’ (e.g., the English -ize in randomize).

Traditionally generative semanticists distinguished several kinds of causative: (i) lexical causatives, in which a single verb denotes the cause and the effect, as in (129a), (ii) morphological causatives, in which the causative verb is related to a non-causative verb by morphological means, as in (129b), and (iii) analytic/periphrastic causatives, in which the cause and the effect are related at the phrasal level, usually with a general causative matrix verb plus a separate non-finite verb complement, as in (129c).

(129) a. kill, open, create b. randomize

The phenomena of causation has been extensively investigated in the philosoph- ical literature in connection with entailments and truth conditions, and this study has often been connected with the study of conditionals and counterfactuals (e.g., philosophers like Lewis and Davidson). Problems that have been addressed with respect to causation in natural language semantics are, among others, direction (distinguishing e cause c from c cause e), epiphenomena (suppose that ‘axe falls (c), its shadow moves (d) and the king loses his head (e)’; is it c, rather then d, that causes e?), preemption (when a cause c is preempted by an event d and thus the af- fect e doesn’t take place, does c cause e?) and causal selection (which event, within a number of events and circumstances should be singled out as ‘the cause’?).14 In the current study I am not concerned with what is entitled to be called ‘true causation’. On the contrary, here I am concerned with what semantic content lin- guistic expressions that are traditionally referred to as causative actually contain. The causative constructions are used in ordinary language in a way that may be essentially different than what philosophers would call ‘true causation’ (cf. [18, p. 110]). In Hebrew, for instance, the verbhe0eˇkil(feed) is referred to as causative simply because it is derived from the root[a][ˇk][l](eat) using the causative template although it is debatable whether the meaning of ‘feed’ is really ‘cause to eat’. Therefore, the reference to causative in the current study is limited in its scope and different in its applications. I am only concerned with causation to the extent that it helps to explain phenomena manifested by linguistic expressions that are referred to as causative. Specifically, I am only concerned with specific causative constructions in Hebrew, allowing the reader to make a comparison with causative constructions in other languages if she wishes so. Lastly, my semantic analysis of the causative constructions proceeds only insofar as they play a role in aspectual distinctions, as this is the ultimate goal of this study.

However, applying the notion of causativity to the theory of aspect is not straight- forward and may be confusing at times. Thus, to avoid common pitfalls, I first review the relation between the notion of causative and the two notions central to our study: Aktionsart and complex events.

Causatives and Aktionsart

The first proposal that makes an explicit link between the causative and Vendlerian Aktionsart is Dowty’s treatment of accomplishments. In his account Dowty [18, ch. 2] suggests that all accomplishments are construed as having the logical structure in (130), Thus having two events that are connected via a causal relation. To illustrate, in his account ‘John killed Bill’ and ‘John painted a picture’ get the following analyses [18, p. 91]:

14_{Dowty [18, p. 99–109] gives a survey of several problems and suggests a solution in terms}

(130) φCAUSEψwhere

φhas (usually) the form of an ACTIVITY and ψhas (usually) the form of a BECOME event

(131) [[John does something]CAUSE[BECOME¬[Bill alive]]] (132) [[John does something]CAUSE[BECOME[a picture exists]]

It was this analysis that encouraged many researchers to identify the notion of accomplishments with the notion of causative. However, Levin [35] argues against this and shows that neither can be reduced to the other. An argument along these lines is maintained in Rothstein [44].

Accomplishments indeed exhibit a ‘cause’ relation under their denotation, but they also exhibit more than that. They posses an intimate relation between a gradual change and the continuous cause via the notion of the ‘incremental theme’. This notion is not a necessary condition for causatives per se (e.g., it is absent in other ‘pure causatives’ such as ‘break’). On the other hand, the resulting change of state of an accomplishment is similar in essence to the resulting change of state denoted by an achievement. Thus, a cause relation is not a sufficient condition for an accomplishment either. Thus, put in Rothstein words,

“to say that a causal element is an inherent part of an accomplishment seems either false or trivially true, and if trivially true, then it will be a part of the meaning of other non-accomplishment verbs too.” [44, p. 104]

The identification of the causative with accomplishments is hard to maintain, firstly because the so-called cause and effect are tightly connected and hard to untangle, and secondly since it excludes other eventualities that involve cause and effect, such as achievements. Intuitively, both accomplishments and achievements involve the notion of cause, accomplishments via a gradual change and achievements via an instantaneous change. These two notions of change are precisely the ones that are formalized by the Event calculus, and formally correspond to the predicates

TrajectoryandInitiatesrespectively.

In this study I adopt the view that the term causative constructions cannot be iden- tified with any specific kind of Aktionsart (achievement, accomplishment), neither can any kind of Aktionsart be reduced to causativeness.

Causatives and Complex Events

Following Davidson, semanticists have assumed that sentences in the language as- sert the existence of underlying events. In Neo-davidsonian theories the event ar- gument is existentially quantified, and in the event calculus the event is constructed

in some fashion on top of the timeline (represented by the Reals). In any case, the classification to situation types (or Aktionsart) refers to those underlying events. A fundamental question about causatives is how many events we can find under their denotation. Dowty’s original proposal (130) gives the causative a ‘bisen- tential analysis’. This analysis involves two underlying event arguments that are interrelated using the CAUSE connective.

However in our account, events might have an elaborate internal structure (e.g., achievements and accomplishments) which involve cause-effect relations and this by itself doesn’t justify decomposition into two events.

The view that accomplishment verbs are ‘bisentential’ and denote two subevents had been rejected by many recent linguists [35, 44] however they continue to iden- tify true causative verbs with ‘complex events’, i.e., events that involves two con- stituent subevents that are related via a cause relation.

An important difference Levin notes between the subevents in accomplishments and subevents in what she calls true causatives is that subevents of accomplish- ments are necessarily temporally dependent, whereas with other causative this need not be the case. In (133a) the activity and the process of realizing the goal unfold together, whereas in (133b) Terry’s decision could have been made well before Sandy hears of it and be totally independent of it.

(133) a. Susan ran to the house

b. Terry shocked Sandy by deciding to run for office

Following this temporal independence observation, we suggest a view that causative constructions are ones that add a ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ relation, contingent on the fact that the ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ relation is not one that is defined by default in the elab- orate internal structure of the eventuality at hand. Rather, it is added on top of the default internal relations, and therefore can be seen as conceptually ’independent’. However, the manner in which external causes take effect is not different from the way default causes affect the internal temporal constituency, and thus the addition of an external cause may trigger a more complex event structure of the original event (the ’effect’), without necessarily requiring its decomposition.

As we shall see, the existing notions of cause and effect can be used to reconstruct the new complex event, and predict a shift in the verb’s situation type. The current proposal stays neutral with respect to whether the external cause deserves the status of an independent event or not. In fact, it is the context that will determine this. By risk of incorporating details too early, I illustrate how a cause can be either a part of the event or of a different one.

(134) a. hatmuna The-picture hicxika laughcause et ACC dina Dina

The picture caused Dina to laugh b. halecan The-clown hixik laughcause et ACC dina Dina The clown caused Dina to laugh c. ze That ˇsehalecan the-clown naˇpal fell al on haroˇs the-head hixik laughcause et Dina dina The clown falling on his head caused Dina to laugh

Again, it is hard to say whether the ‘cause’ of Dina’s laughing deserves the status of a separate event. In the first example, we are concerned with an instrument that causes Dina’s laughing, in the last another event (the clown’s falling, an achieve- ment) is the cause of laughing, and the second case is ambiguous between the two readings.

Nevertheless, in the three examples the verb hicxik (laughcause) carries a basic

meaning that persists in all these contexts. This meaning is precisely what we are interested in formalizing.

The Causal Chain

A different link between causal relations and situation types that seems more pro- ductive in the discussion the aspectual distinctions was proposed by Smith [47]. The causal chain (originally attributed to Croft) was used by linguists to account for different phenomena related to the internal event structure (e.g., event compo- nents, thematic roles, etc). The scheme is, roughly, iconic from left to right in the sense that it represents temporal precedence.15

(135) CAUSE SUBJECT ACTION OBJECT RESULT

Smith uses the causal chain “to study the different lexical spans of verb constellations”[47, p. 33–36]. A lexical span means “how much of the causal chain it covers”, and situ- ation types (or Aktionsarten) have different characteristic spans. Thus she identifies the following situation types according to their mapping onto the causal chain: (136) a. state ...RESULT

b. activity ...SUBJECT ACTION... c. achievement ...ACTION OBJECT RESULT d. accomplishment SUBJECT ACTION OBJECT RESULT e. semelfactive ...ACTION...

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There are several interesting observations about this account in the context of the current study. First, the account fits the view that cause is a part of the event elaborated structure rather then requiring event decomposition.

Second, it identifies causal relations with temporal precedence. This observation is not as trivial as it sounds and it has been claimed by philosophers (e.g., Lewis) that temporal precedence need not be assumed in true causatives. Following Dowty [18], Rothstein [44] and others I assume that the cause precedes the effect and leave other kinds of exceptional causatives out of discussion.

Lastly, ignoring terminology, the underlying characteristic lexical span of various situation types is iconically (almost entirely) identical to the ones indicated by the tuples of the EC.

(137) a. state ...h−,−,−,+i

b. activity ...h+,+,−,−i

c. achievement ...h−,−,+,+i

d. accomplishmenth+,+,+,+i

e. semelfactive ...h−,−,+,−i

There is still, however, one fundamental problem with this account. According to Smith definitions (136) the CAUSE ingredient does not have its own contribution to the lexical span of different situations. The only reference to the CAUSE element is done with respect to accomplishments which contain the entire span. This brings back the problem of causative-accomplishment identification.

On a different note, as a by-product of the theory Smith presents a causative clas- sification that emerges from the mapping from sentences onto parts of the causal chain. Thus, she distinguishes Causative, Inchoative, Inceptive, Egressive and Re- sultative sentences as events that focus on ‘the entire chain’, ‘entry into a state’, ‘entry into an event’, ‘exit from an event’ and ‘the end of the chain’ respectively. I believe that in this account there is a confusion between ‘cause’ and ‘CAUSE’ that parallels the problems we discussed above. A ‘cause’ is a relation that refers to every two elements in the sequence (SUBJECT causes an ACTION, ACTION causes a RESULT, etc), and a CAUSE is an additional element (of the same type of SUBJECT, OBJECT, ACTION) that can be added to the chain on top of existing elements.

In order to remedy the problematic identification between causatives and accom- plishments and to avoid the confusion between ‘cause’ and CAUSE, I modify the causal chain account and rephrase it according to our needs:

The causal chain is a list of elements that iconically stand in ‘cause’ and ‘precedes’ relation from left to right. The lexical span of the situation is defined by its mapping

onto the causal chain.16

(138) SUBJECT ACTION OBJECT RESULT

The causal chain can be altered with an additional element CAUSE, that precedes any of the other elements.

(139) (CAUSE) SUBJECT ACTION OBJECT RESULT

Since not all situations map onto the entire span of the list, the addition of the external element at the head of the chain puts focus on the beginning of the situation and give rise to the causative/inceptive/inchoative interpretation.

(140) (CAUSE) SUBJECT ACTION OBJECT RESULT (141) a. caused state ...CAUSE RESULT (inchoative)

b. caused activity ...CAUSE SUBJECT ACTION (inceptive)

c. caused Achiev. ...CAUSE ACTION OBJECT RESULT (inceptive)

d. caused Accomp...CAUSE SUBJECT ACTION OBJECT RESULT (causative) In sum, the lexical chain provides us with a means to define more precisely the difference between ‘cause’ as a relation between components of the internal events structure and a CAUSE which is an additional element that is added and alters the situation viewpoint. The CAUSE stands in ‘cause’ and ‘precede’ relations to the first element in the lexical chain and it may give rise to a different interpretation to the one denoted by the verb’s original Aktionsart.

Causative and Thematic Relation

Causatives are often mentioned with connection to agency. Following our claim that causatives are events with an added external cause, and as a direct implica- tion of the possible temporal independency introduced by Levin, it is assumed that causes contribute a new participant in addition to those that already exist in the original situation.

Doron [15] formalizes this notion in her account of the Semitic templates and de- fines causative constructions as ones that contribute an additional agent participant in the sense of Dowty’s proto-agent [17].

In this work we assume that the additional cause element introduces an additional agent-participant. However, we will not be concerned with the specific kind of agency involved and specific entailments (in the sense of Dowty’s proto-agent list). This will be left open for future research.

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Summary

A cause is a relation within the internal structure of events. It characterizes features of the structures we have elaborated for different kinds of eventualities and can take different forms (instantaneous, gradual changes). The cause relation entails precedence (the cause always temporally precedes the effect).

Causatives as linguistic terms cannot be reduced to philosophical causation, and vice versa. Causatives might, but not necessarily do, entail an additional subsitua- tion. This is in many cases dependent on context.

We define causatives as events/situations with an additional, external, component. The additional component stands in ‘cause’/‘precede’ relation to the existing situa- tion and its internal constituents. It brings about the occurrence of the same event, however the original event is looked at from a different viewpoint which might trigger a shift into a different situation type.

The various interpretations that are available under the causative reading are in- choative, inceptive, and causative all of which put emphasis on the bringing about/coming about of the new (static/dynamic) situation.