Causatively

Causatively is an adverb used in linguistics and general language description to refer to actions or constructions that express causation — that one entity causes another to perform an action or brings about a change of state. In this sense, causativity is the relationship between the causing participant and the affected state or event.

Causative constructions can be realized in several ways: lexical causatives use a causative verb such as make, cause, or get; periphrastic constructions use have or let, as in “The manager had the team finish the report” or “She let him leave early”; and morphological or syntactic causatives attach a causative morpheme to a verb in some languages to designate that the subject brings about the action.

English examples include: “The teacher made the students redo the assignment,” which expresses a causative action where the subject causes another to act. “The wind opened the door” illustrates a causative result with a non-human agent causing an event, and without an explicit causative verb. In linguistic analysis, the adverb causatively is used to describe when a sentence or verb usage conveys causation rather than a simple, non-causative action.

Cross-linguistically, many languages have dedicated causative markers, with morphology sometimes stacking to produce double causatives, where one cause leads another to perform an action. The scope of causatives can include bringing about a change of state (open, melt) or forcing an agent to perform an action.

See also: causative verb, causative construction, causative prefix.