causativepassive

Causative passive is a linguistic voice that combines causation and passivity. In languages that have distinct causative and passive morphologies, the causative passive yields a form whose subject is the patient of the base action and simultaneously the patient of the causative event; the agent is often expressed or understood as someone who caused the event. The construction is used to describe situations in which an external agent makes someone or something undergo an action, or causes a change of state, rather than the subject performing the action itself.

Formation and realization vary by language. In morphologically rich languages, the causative and passive affixes are stacked on the verb, sometimes yielding a single suffix chain or stem changes, e.g., V-caus- passive. In analytic languages, the causative passive may be expressed with auxiliary verbs or periphrasis meaning “be made to” or “be caused to.” Example: in Japanese, the causative passive is formed with the combination saserareru: 私は先生に宿題をさせられた (I was made to do homework by the teacher). In English, a similar meaning is conveyed by be made to + verb or by passive of a causative clause, as in The door was made to open by the engineer.

Cross-linguistic patterns show that causative passives often express coercion, obligation, or unexpected consequences. They contrast with simple passive and with pure causatives, and their availability can affect syntactic patterns and argument structure in a sentence.