caus

Caus, in linguistic usage, is an abbreviation used to label causative constructions or morphemes. It is not a language or a standalone concept, but a tag commonly found in interlinear glosses and descriptive grammars to indicate that a verb form expresses causation—the subject causes someone or something else to perform an action or undergo a change of state.

Causatives appear in many languages and can be realized in several ways. They may be morphological, implemented as affixes attached to a verb; they may be periphrastic, using auxiliary verbs or dedicated causative verbs (for example, make someone do something, cause someone to do something); or they may be lexical, where a derived verb inherently encodes causation. The exact realization varies cross-linguistically, and many languages employ a mix of strategies for causation.

In semantics and syntax, causatives typically involve two or more participants: a causer and a patient (the entity affected by the action). They often change the valency of the base verb, adding or reinterpreting participant roles. Researchers distinguish lexical causatives, where the base verb itself encodes causation, from syntactic or morphological causatives, where causation is marked by a separate form. Some languages exhibit causative alternations, where a single verb can alternate between intransitive and transitive meanings through causation-related morphology or syntax.

Examples in English include periphrastic causatives such as “make someone do something” (The teacher made the student study) and direct causatives using verbs like “cause” (The rain caused the plants to grow). In linguistic annotation, the label caus helps researchers quickly identify and compare how different languages encode the causal relationship.