CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR*

By BERNARDCOMRIE

0 INTRODUCTION

0.1 The data This paper is a contribution to the theory of universal

grammar, within a framework that is transformational, though
without being particularly formalized. The informal nature of much
of the presentation is deliberate policy, in that most of the claims
made should hold irrespective of the particular variety of transfor-
mational grammar used, indeed they could in general be integrated
into a traditional grammatical account. Unlike much of universal
grammar from a transformational viewpoint, the present account
does not base itself on a detailed analysis of some phenomenon in
English, but rather utilizes data from a wide range (genetic, typologi-
cal, and geographical) of languages. Although the treatment of each
language is necessarily brief, it is intended that statements made
about the language should be sufficiently rigorous and accurate to be
included in a fuller analysis of the individual language. The data are
taken partly from work with native-speaker informants, and partly
from other linguists’ accounts of the languages in question, as noted
in the treatment of each language in the text.
The constructions examined in these languages are causative
constructions, more particularly causatives where the element indi-
cating causation is fused with the other verb, generally to form a
new single derived verb. The clearest example of this is the synthetic
or morphological causative, as in Turkish, where from the verb ol
‘die’ we can form a suffixed causative 01-diir ‘cause to die, kill’, from
this again 01-dur-t ‘cause to kill’. However, there are instances of
analytic causative constructions that fall under the same general
heading, for instance in French (faire +infinitive).l In all the lan-
guages on which my argument is based, the formation of causatives,
whether synthetic or analytic, is reasonably productive (in some cases,
e.g. Turkish, even to a limited degree iterative), and reasonably
* For this and all other footnotes, see the end of the relevant article.
2 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
regular morphologically (in some languages completely so); this to
avoid possible objections that the constructions I am dealing with
are so unproductive and irregular as not to be worth treating by
means of a rule-system rather than a list.

0.2 The framework A given noncausative verb, depending on its

valency (number and type of arguments), may take one or more of
each of the following: Subj, DO, 10, Obl. If the noncausative verb
has a valency n (takes n arguments), then its causative equivalent
will normally take n+l arguments, since in addition to the argu-
ments of the noncausative verb, the causative verb also includes
reference to the causer of the action. I shall assume, for the sake of
argument, that the underlying structure of a causative construction
contains a matrix sentence and an embedded sentence, so that the
English sentence below would be represented as indicated :

(1) John made Mary give the book to Fred

MS CAUSE S

ES V ED0 EIO

John make
I
Mary
I
give
I
book
I
Fred

In languages where, in surface structure, the causative element and

the embedded verb are fused into one, this underlying structure is
modified in derived structure to :2

Cauje-V ES ED0 El0

John make-give
I
Mary
I
book Fred
I
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 3
Comparing (3) with its noncausativeequivalent:
(4)
S

we observe that (3) is a simplex sentence with one more argument

than in the simplex sentence (4). This difference between the valency
of the causative and noncausative verbs is the centre-point of the dis-
cussion of this paper, as it is from this discrepancy that nearly all
the problems arise.
Above, I claimed that a verb may take ‘one or more’ of each of
the syntactic positions listed. Clearly, this is not correct for all
languages, since most languages have a restriction on the number of
subjects, direct and indirect objects a verb may take-usually, just
one of each (but there is no such restriction on other oblique con-
stituents). The increase in the valency of a causative verb, together
with restrictions on the number of noun phrases that may occupy a
given syntactic position, leads to conflict; for instance, derived
structure (3) contains two subjects, one of which must be altered or
removed if the language in question allows only one subject per
simplex sentence. But if one of the subjects is moved, what syntactic
position should it be moved to, given that other positions may al-
ready be filled? The greater part of this paper is devoted to showing
how different languages resolve this conflict, and in particular to
showing that the solutions used in different languages have more in
common than could be expected as a result of chance, tending to
cluster around what I have called the ‘paradigm case’, illustrated
here by Turkish (section 1).
In addition to restrictions on doubling up on syntactic positions,
it is necessary to introduce one more piece of theoretical apparatus,
needed independently of causative constructions, but which interacts
with the other factors to provide a principled explanation for many
of the syntacticpeculiarities of causatives. This is the Case Hierarchy,
first discussed in Keenan and Comrie (1972). The Case Hierarchy was
originally established on the basis of the relative accessibility of
4 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
different syntactic positions to relative clause formation (whence the
alternative term ‘Accessibility Hierarchy’) : some languages only
allow relative clauses to be formed on subjects, others allow them to
be formed on both subjects and direct objects, while there are no
languages allowing relative clauses to be formed on direct objects
but not on subjects. Thus we say that Subj is higher up the Case
Hierarchy than DO, in fact it is the highest position. The full Hier-
archy, as given and justified in Keenan and Comrie (1972), is:
( 5 ) Subj - DO - I 0 - Obl- Gen - OComp
(The last two positions, Gen (adnominal genitive) and OComp
(object of comparison) are not relevant to the present discussion,
since they are not arguments of the verb.) The relevance of the Case
Hierarchy to causatives will become clear in the course of section 1,
though ib may be useful at this stage to give some examples from a
familiar language, French, intimating the relevance of the Case
Hierarchy; note how the surface syntactic position of ES changes
from (6) through (7) to (8) :
(6) Je ferai courir Henriette
I shall make Henriette run (ES appears as DO)
(7) Je ferai manger les gdteaux d Jean
I shall make Jean eat the cakes (ES appears as 10)
(8) Je ferai h i r e une lettre au directeur par Jean
I shall make Jean write a letter to the headmaster (ES appears
as Obl)

1 TURKISH

In Turkish, the basic syntactic positions are expressed as follows :3

the subject noun phrase is always in the absolute case; the direct
object is in the absolute case, if indefinite, in the accusativeif definite.
Below, all the examples will involve definite noun phrases, so subject
and direct object will always be distinguished overtly. The absolute
case has no inflection, while the accusative has the suffix -i/-i/-u/-ii
(the choice among these suffixes is determined by the rules for vowel
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 5
harmony). The indirect object stands in the dative, with the suffix
-a/-e:
9) Ali mektub-u Hasan-a goster-di
letter DO I 0 show Past
Ali showed the letter to Hasan
Causatives in Turkish are formed by suflixation, the commonest
suffixes being -dir, -ir, -t, the first two with vowel harmony variants
(Lewis, 1967: 144-6). Thus ol ‘die’ has a causative ol-dur ‘cause to
die, kill’. This causative construction is iterative, within limits, so
that one can construct causatives of more than one degree, e.g.
ol-dur-t ‘cause to kill’.
Looking firstly at causatives of intransitive verbs, we find the
following:
(10) Hasan OI -du
die Past
Hasan died
(11) Ali Hasan-r ol -dur -dii
DO die Cause Past
Ali killed Hasan
Comparing the syntactic positions in (10) and (1 l), we see that the
effect of causativization has been to retain MS as superficial subject,
whereas ES turns up as superficial direct object-in fact, demoted
one step down the Case Hierarchy. It is quite impossible to phrase
(11) in Turkish using two subjects (i.e. in this example, two definite
nouns in the absolute case) :
(12) *Ali Hasan o1-dur-du
Where the noncausative verb has an indirect object, but no direct
object, the same situation arises, e.g. (Lewis, 1967: 147):
(13) Cocuk okul -a bajla-di
child school I 0 start Past
The child started school.
(14) Dijgi gocu&u okul -a bajla-t -ti
dentist child DO school I0 start Caus Past
The dentist made the child start school.
6 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
(14) does not violate the requirement that there should not be more
than one direct object in derived structure; as okul-a is indirect
object, it does not clash with the superficial direct object cocu&u.
A problem arises where, in addition to ES, there is also EDO, for
instance in the causativecorrespondingto
(1 5) Miidiir mektub-u imzala-dr
director letter DO sign Past
The director signed the letter
In the corresponding causative sentence, one cannot have two direct
objects, i.e. one cannot say:
(16) *D&i mudur -ii mektub-u imzala-t -ti
dentist director DO letter DO sign Caus Past
The dentist made the director sign the letter
as Turkish does not allow one verb to have two or more direct ob-
jects. Instead, ES appears in the dative case, as an indirect object:
(17) Dig2 mektub-u miidur -e imzala-t -ti
dentist letter DO director I0 sign Caus Past
The dentist made the director sign the letter
In this construction, ES is demoted down the Hierarchy to the next
vacant position, i.e. it cannot remain as subject given the presence
of MS ( 3Subj), it cannot be made direct object given the presence
of E D 0 ( 5 DO), the next best is indirect object.
Proceeding further, we can now look at what happens when we
have the causative corresponding to a verb that has both a direct and
an indirect object, i.e. corresponding to
(18) Miidiir Hasan-a mektub-u goster-di
director I 0 letter DO show Past
The director showed the letter to Hasan
Given that there is already a matrix subject, and that the embedded
sentence has both DO and 10, it is not in general possible for ES to
appear in surface in any of these syntactic positions:
(19) *Digi mudiir Hasan-a mektub-u goster-t-ti

(20) *Digi mudur-u Hasan-a mektub-u goster-t-ti

 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 7
(21) *Dijgi miidiir-e Hasan-a mektub-u goster-t-ti
My informant was at first somewhat hesitant about ruling out (22),
with the word order:
(22) ?Dijgi miidur-e mektub-u Hasan-a goster-t-ti
but on balance decided that the only possible form would be (23),4
where ES turns up in surface structure as one of the syntactic rela-
tions subsumed under Obl, in fact with the postposition tarafindan
‘by’:
(23) D i g i Hasan-a mektub-u miidiir tarafindan
dentist I 0 letter DO director by
goster-t -ti
show Caus Past
Below the level of 10,the Case Hierarchy does not make any pre-
diction as to which of the many forms subsumed under Obl will
actually occur; i.e. from the viewpoint of the Hierarchy alone, the
choice of the postposition tarafindan in (23) is quite arbitrary. From
the viewpoint of Turkish syntax as a whole, however, the choice of
tarufindan is by no means totally arbitrary. In passive constructions,
the passive agent also appears as a noun phrase with the same
postposition, e.g.
(24) Adam kadrn tarafindan dov-ul -dii
man woman by hit Pass Past
The man was hit by the woman
Thus this particular construction is a natural construction, in Tur-
kish, for an agentive noun phrase to appear in. All that this shows
is that the Case Hierarchy does not exhaust the grammar of Turkish,
although it is an important part of the grammar, interacting with
other aspects of Turkish syntax.
One point that may arise in the reader’s mind is this: is it always
necessary for ES to be demoted to the jirst empty position in the
Hierarchy, or can it be demoted further down than is absolutely
necessary? For Turkish, the answer seems to be that it can only be
demoted as far as it must. In (1 1) a dative, or the tarafindan construc-
tion, for ES is quite unacceptable :
(25) *AIi Hasan-a oI-diir-dii
8 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
(26) *Ali Hasan tarafindan ol-dur-du

In (17), the replacement of the dative by the tarafindan construction

was rejected by my informant:
(27) * D&i mektub-u mudur tarafindan imzala-t-ti

This step-by-step movement of ES down the Hierarchy provides the

strongest justification for the application of the Case Hierarchy to
causatives. For given that ES cannot appear as surface subject in the
presence of MS, then it is rather empty to claim simply that ES must
be demoted down the Hierarchy: since Subj is the top rank of the
Hierarchy, there is simply no other direction for ES to move in. The
claim that ES is demoted stepwise down the Hierarchy, on the other
hand, is much more significant.
1.1 The paradigm case The combination of the following four
features, which characterize the Turkish causative, I shall refer to as
the ‘paradigm case’ of the causative construction. In fact, most of
the languages I have looked at deviate from this paradigm case;
however, these variations are not random, indeed in most cases the
language in question deviates from only one of the four characteristics
of the paradigm case, even then sometimes only in certain specific
cases.
(i) Doubling on the syntactic positions Subject, Direct object,
and Indirect object is excluded, i.e. no simplex sentence, whether or
not causative, may have more than one each of Subj, DO, and 10.
There is no similar restriction on the occurrence of other oblique
constituents. Exceptions to this will be referred to as ‘syntactic
doubling’.
(ii) Where the restriction on doubling requires one of the argu-
ments of the causative verb to be demoted to a different syntactic
position, it is always ES that is so demoted.6
(iii) ES is always demoted to the next available position down the
Hierarchy. Exceptions will be referred to as ‘extended demotion’.
(iv) This demotion is possible right down to the stage of other
oblique constituents, i.e. there is no restriction on the possibility of a
verb having a causative simply because the valency of the non-
causative verb would force ES to be demoted right to the bottom
of the Hierarchy. Exceptions will be referred to as ‘causative block-
age’.
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 9
The remainder of this paper will examine the exceptions to
characteristics (i), (iii), and (iv); for ease of exposition, I shall take
them in the order (iv), (i), (iii).

BLOCKAGE
2 CAUSATIVE

In the paradigm case of a causative construction, it is possible for a

noncausative verb with any number of arguments to have a causative
equivalent, provided ES is demoted down the Hierarchy to the next
available empty position, in so far as the lowest position on the
Hierarchy, Obl, is always able to receive new noun phrases. One
possible variation on this paradigm case would be for a language to
allow demotion of ES only down to a certain level of the Hierarchy,
but no further. This would mean that if all the higher positions
were already filled by noun phrases of the embedded sentence (EDO,
EIO), there would be no possibility of the given causative construc-
tion being realized in surface structure, at least not by the given
strategy (the language might have analytic means of expressing es-
sentially the same information). This phenomenon, causative block-
age, is illustrated by Songhai (Sonrai), a Nilo-Saharan language of
West Africa (Mali). An analysis of Songhai causative constructions
is given by Shopen and Konar6 (1970), from which the data below
are taken.
Subject and direct object have no special markers in Songhai,
although these positions are syntactically distinguishable given the
Subject-Verb-Object word order, e.g.
(28) Feneter di ba
window the broke
The window broke
(29) Musa nga tasu di
Mousa ate rice the
Mousa ate the rice
The indirect object is followed by the postposition se:
(30) Ali neere bari di Musa se
sold horse the I0
Ali sold the horse to Mousa
10 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
Causatives in Songhai are formed with the suffix -ndi on the verb.
The causative to sentence type (28) is :
(31) Ali ba-ndi feneter di
Ali broke the window
where, from the word order, Ali (MS) is subject and feneter di (ES)
is direct object. Corresponding to (29) we have :
(32) Ali nga-ndi tasu di Musa se
Ali made Mousa eat the rice
where the MS is subject, the ED0 direct object, and ES has been
demoted down the Hierarchy to EIO (postposition se).
The problem arises when we try to form a causative sentence
corresponding to (30). Songhai does not allow doubling on the
indirect object position, any more than on the direct object position.
One might therefore expect the embedded subject to be demoted
further down the Hierarchy. In fact this does not happen, and
corresponding to the underlying structure
(33) Garba CAUSE s[Ali neere buri di Musa se]
there is no grammatical surface structure, in particular not:
{Musa se Ali se}
(34) *Garba neere-ndi bari di A,i se Muss se

Garba made Ali sell the horse to Mousa

Songhai conforms to the ‘paradigm’ causative in several respects :
it is always ES that is demoted down the Hierarchy; ES is demoted
down the Hierarchy to the next available empty position; there is
no doubling on positions in the Hierarchy. Where it differs from the
paradigm case is that this demotion down the Hierarchy may only be
continued to a specific point, 10, after which the underlying forms
are filtered out as not underlying any grammatical derived structure.
As Shopen and KonarC (1970: 21 5) say :
There are only a limited number of syntactic nodes available to
verbs and if there are too many semantic functions, one of them
has to be left out.
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 11
If ES is unspecified, as is possible in the Songhai causative, then a
causative can be formed on a verb with direct and indirect objects,
since there is no ES-demotion to cause blockage. The following
sentence is ambiguous :
(35) Garba neere-ndi bari di Musa se
since Musa se can be either ES, i.e. ‘Garba had Musa sell the horse’,
or EIO, i.e. ‘Garba had the horse sold to Mousa’.
One might also expect to find languages where the causative is
blocked even higher up the Hierarchy, at DO (a language that
blocked the causative at Subj would simply have no causatives).
Among the languages examined for this study there was none with a
productive synthetic causative construction that presented this
restriction, but if we take into consideration the admittedly unpro-
ductive synthetic causative in some of the better-known Indo-
European languages (excluding Indo-Iranian), then this is the situa-
tion we observe. Thus in Latin we find intransitive and transitive
(causative-of-intransitive)pairs like fugere ‘to flee’-fugire ‘to put to
flight’, liquere ‘to melt (intr.)’-liqu&e ‘to melt (tr.)’, in Russian
sidet’ ‘to be sitting’-saZat’ ‘to seat’, belet‘ ‘to belbecome whitey-
belit’ ‘to bleach’. However, we do not find causatives, even with this
degree of morphological regularity and productivity, formed from
verbs that are in themselves transitive. Further examples are quoted
by Nedjalkov and Sil’nickij (1969: 25-6). The Case Hierarchy pro-
vides an explanation for Nedjalkov and Sil‘nickij’s observation that
a language forms causatives from verbs with valency n+ I only if it
forms causatives from verbs with valency n: causative blockage
operates at a specific point on the Hierarchy, permitting causativiza-
tion higher up the Hierarchy, excluding it lower down.

3 SYNTACTIC
DOUBLING

So far, we have been looking basically at languages where it is not

possible in surface structure to have more than one each of subject,
direct object, and indirect object; although there is, of course, no
such restriction on other oblique constituents, since probably all
languages allow sentences in surface structure to have a variety of
such constituents. Now I wish to turn to languages where doubling
12 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
on certain syntactic positions is permitted, and to the relevance of
such doubling for the analysis of causatives.
3.1 Doubling on indirect object Several of the languages examined
allow doubling on indirect object position; indeed most of the
languages that one would otherwise expect to have two indirect
objects do in fact allow of this possibility, though usually there is
pressure to rephrase the sentence in some way so that it does not
have two indirect objects. Although my main Turkish informant was
very unhappy about:
(36) ?D&i miidiir -e mektub-u Hasan-a
dentist director I 0 letter DO I0
goster-t -ti
show Caus Past
The dentist made the director show the letter to Hasan
preferring the variant where ES is demoted further down the Hier-
archy to a postpositional phrase with tarajindan 'by', other sources
state explicitly that, for some native speakers, such sentences are
grammatical (Sebiiktekin, 1971 : 82). Thus even in our 'paradigm'
language, some speakers allow doubling on this position.
Punjabi has the same peculiarity where one might expect a double
indirect object. My informant's first suggestion as the Punjabi gloss
of the English sentence below was:
(37) Bande ne masfar na! kdpi mwp4ya"nii SWQ -0; -i
man Subj teacher by story boys I 0 tell Caus Past
The man made the teacher tell the story to the boys
In this sentence, ES is realized as Obl, with the postposition na/
'by'. But when presented with the alternative (38), he accepted it
without hesitation, although the latter has two indirect objects, with
nii :6
(38) Bande ne maslar nii kdpi mwpdya"nii s w p v i - i
French allows causative constructions with two indirect objects,
provided they are not adjacent, although the alternative construction
withpar 'by' for ES is preferred:
(39) Jeferai h i r e ri Jean une lettre au directeur
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES A N D UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 13
ri Jean au directeur
(40) *Je ferai dcrire une lettre
au directeur d Jean
(41) Je ferai tcrire une lettre au directeur par Jean
I shall get Jean to write a letter to the headmaster
In addition, there are fully natural French sentences that presuppose
the structure of (39) as an underlying structure, e.g.
(42) C’est b Jean quej e ferai h i r e une lettre au directeur
It’s Jean that I shall get to write a letter to the headmaster

According to Schachter and Otanes (1972: 322), Tagalog permits

two indirect objects (marked by the preposition kay in (43)) in causa-
tives :
(43) Mag-pa -bigay ka ng pera kay Rosa kay Maria
Caus give you DO money I 0 I0
Have Rosa give the money to Maria, or: Have Maria give
the money to Rosa
My informant rejected (43), however, on the grounds of ‘unclarity’.
(In Tagalog, as in Songhai (section 2), ES may not be demoted to
Obl.)
For Georgian, Vogt (1971 : 130) notes that one does occasionally
find two indirect objects in causative constructions, and quotes the
example (from the standard dictionary of the Georgian Academy of
Sciences):
(44) KaZ -s ar mi-g-a-cem-ineb-t teimuraz -sa
girl DO not I shall cause you to give (her)Teimurazi I 0
I shall not let you give the girl to Teimurazi
In this example, the second person plural indirect object is indicated
by the verbal prefix g- and suffix -t. As is usual in modern Georgian,
the third person direct object (kaZ-s)is not coded overtly in the verb.
Nor is the third person indirect object (teimuraz-sa), although this is
usually possible. A first person singular subject is never shown
overtly where there is a second person object (g-). Vogt (1971:
86.7, 130) notes that although such constructions are perfectly
correct, they do strain the system to its limits. In other words, if a
14 TRANSACTIONSOF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974

language allows doubling up on indirect objects, and has subsequent

transformational processes that require identification of the indirect
object (such as verb agreement), then something has to give. In this
case, the potential agreement with the indirect object expressed by a
full noun phrase is excluded. Such problems are even more evident
in examining languages that allow doubling on direct objects.
Overall, languages are not particuIarly resistant to doubling on
the indirect object position. Often, informants’ objections to such
sentences seem to be their unclarity or ambiguity, rather than out-
right ungrammaticality. Running ahead somewhat, we can make the
following generalization : all languages have doubling on the position
Obl; doubling on I 0 is common, although many languages prefer to
avoid it; doubling on DO is less common, but well attested-again,
there is pressure against it; doubling on Subj is very rare. (The data
for the last two positions are presented below.) Significantly, this
distribution follows precisely the Case Hierarchy: the higher a
syntactic position is in the Hierarchy, the greater is the pressure
against its being doubled. Although I have presented this in con-
nection with causativization, one might expect it to hold equally
of syntactic positions in noncausative sentences, and by and large
this is true, in that languages that allow two subjects in a simplex
sentence are quite exceptional, those that allow two direct objects
more common, while all languages allow more than one other
oblique constituent in noncausative sentences. However, indirect
objects do not seem to fit in so well, since doubling on this position
is rare outside of causative sentences and similar cases where
matrix and embedded sentences are fused. But the reason does
not, I think, lie in the exceptional syntactic behaviour of indirect
objects, but rather in the rules that link semantic and syntactic ar-
guments of the verb: given the semantic notions that typically cor-
respond to indirect objects, it is hard to imagine a simple verb that
could take two indirect objects. From the point of view of syntax,
it is an accident that there are no noncausative verbs with two in-
direct objects.

3.2 Doubling on direct object A number of languages have non-

causative verbs that take two direct objects. Reasonably familiar
examples are Latin (Gildersleeve and Lodge, 1895: 209, 215-16),
Ancient Greek (Goodwin, 1894: 227), Sanskrit (Macdonell, 1927 :
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 15
l85), Hebrew (Kautzsch, 1910: 370-l), and Arabic (Wright, 1898:
47-8). A Sanskrit example is :'
(45) Balim yticate vasudhtim
Bali (DO) he-asks earth (DO)
He asks Bali for the earth
The causative of intransitive verbs provides little difficulty in
Sanskrit. MS remains as derived subject, while ES appears in the
accusative, i.e. is demoted to direct object position in the Hierarchy:
(46) Rcirno madhuliham pcitayati
Rama (Subj) bee (DO) fly-Cause
Rama makes the bee fly
More problematic is the case of transitive verbs, in fact grammars
of Sanskrit are not entirely in agreement as to the precise range of
possibilities. In this connection, it should be remembered that Sans-
krit was used over a long period of time, during which time it natu-
rally evolved syntactically; and that during the latter part of its
history, up to the present day, those using Sanskrit were not in fact
native speakers of the language. (The causative construction in the
modern Indian languages I have examined differs from that of
Sanskrit, at least from that of the second possible construction
noted below.) According to Renou (1961 : 472), the older construc-
tion, given by the most famous of the Sanskrit grammarians, Piinini,
was for E D 0 to remain as DO, while ES appeared in the instrumen-
tal (cp. the passive agent), e.g.
(47) Tcim Jvabhih khcidayet
her (DO) by-dogs (Instr.) eat-Caus-Optative
He should have dogs devour her
I shall return to this construction in section 4. Note that the general
restriction against positions on the Hierarchy being occupied by
more than one constituent does not automatically predict that ES
should move down the Hierarchy below direct object in (47), since
we have simple sentences like (45) with two direct objects-in other
words, there is no restriction in Sanskrit against a sentence having
more than one direct object. And indeed in later Sanskrit, in particu-
lar the classical language, we find ES expressed by the accusative,
16 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
even where there is also an EDO, eg. (cp. Renou, 1961: 472; Mac-
donell, 1927: 186; Apte, 1898: 31):
(48) Rimam vedam adhyipayati
Rama (DO) Veda (DO) know-Cause
He teaches Rama the Veda
Sanskrit causatives also have passive equivalents. The case of
particular interest involves the causative of transitive verbs, since
here there is the possibility of two direct objects in the active form.
In the active causative it is normally ES that turns up as matrix
subject, while E D 0 remains direct object:
(49) Rcimo vedam adhyipyate
Rama (Subj) Veda (DO) know-Caus-Pass
Rama is taught the Veda
(50) Tim Svcina(z khidyante
her (DO) dogs (Subj) devour-Caus-Pass
Dogs are made to devour her
(Macdonell, 1927: 186);
( 5 1) BhCpyenalBhCpyam ka{an3 kirayati
servant (Instr./DO) mat (DO) prepare-Caus
He makes the servant prepare the mat
(52) BhCpyah kalam k6ryate
servant (Subj) mat (D)O prepare-Caus-Pass
The servant is made to prepare the mat
Apte (1898: 34) mentions that in certain cases, particularly where
the embedded verb is one of eating or knowledge, either ES or E D 0
may become subject in the passive construction:
(53) Ba/um odanaril bhojayati
boy (DO) food (DO) eat-Caus
He makes the boy eat food
(54) Ba{ur odanam bhojyate
boy (Subj) food (DO) eat-Caus-Pass
The boy is made to eat food
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 17
(55) Bufum odano bhojyate
boy (DO) food (Subj) eat-Caus-Pass
Renou (1961: 472-3) notes these passive causatives, but considers
them artificial constructions of the grammarians, rarely encountered
in Sanskrit texts other than grammatical treatises.
Thus we find that two direct objects are possible in causative
constructions, as in noncausatives, in Sanskrit, and the predictable
difficultieswith passivization occur.
Other languages known to me from the literature that clearly
allow double direct objects in causative constructions are Amharic
(Titov, 1971: 93), some dialects of Lappish (Lorentz, 1973: 12-13),
Hebrew (Kautzsch, 1910: 370), and Arabic (Wright, 1898: 47),
although the formation of causatives in Hebrew and Arabic is of
doubtful productivity. In the fuller account of my work on causatives,
I hope to show that Swahili also belongs here.

3.3 Doubling on subject From the discussion at the end of section

3.1, it should follow that doubling on subject position is the rarest
type of doubling. This is certainly true in the languages I have
examined and those familiar to me from the literature. Indeed, the
problem is rather to find a clear example of a language that does
allow doubling on subject position, whether in causative or non-
causative sentences. If it should turn out that no language allows two
subjects in a simplex sentence-and many linguists with whom I have
discussed the problem seem to feel in their bones that this is so-
then this is quite consistent with the claims made in this paper,
nonexistence being the extreme case of rarity. However, I have not
yet seen sufficient argumentation to convince me that double sub-
jects are a linguistic impossibility.
The only languages with which I am familiar from the literature that
seem possible candidates are Japanese and Korean. The most immedi-
ately apparent exponents of surface structure syntactic positions are
the postpositions. In Korean, the subject takes -ka (4after conson-
ants), the direct object -ZiZ (4after consonants), the indirect object
eke; in addition, the topic of the sentence is marked by -nin (-inafter
consonants), which replaces the subject or direct object marker. In
Japanese, gu marks the subject, o the direct object, ni the indirect ob-
ject (as well as several other oblique constituents), and wa the topic.
18 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY1974
A discussion of Korean multiple subject constructions is given
by Park (1973). Unfortunately, Park assumes a priori that a simplex
sentence cannot have more than one subject, without arguing the
point at He solves the problem by assuming that apparently
simplex sentences with more than one subject are in fact complex,
each noun phrase with -ka ( 4 ) being subject of a different simplex
sentence. Irrespective of the empirical validity of this analysis, Park
fails to provide any nonaprioristic argument against simplex sen-
tences with more than one subject.
Similar constructions in Japanese are discussed by Kuno (1973 :
67-95), such as :9
(56) Watakusi gu eiga ga suki desu
I Subj (?)film Subj (?)like
I like the film
(57) Nihon ga dansei ga tanmei desu
Japan Subj (?) men Subj (?)have-a-short-life-span
Men have a short life-span in Japan
Kuno (1973: 80) dismisses the suggestion that the underlying struc-
tures of (56)-(57) have two subjects with the remark ‘this would be a
very peculiar analysis, to say the least’; again, the empirical basis of
the argument is lacking. However, in the detailed discussion of sen-
tences like (56), Kuno (1973: 81-91) provides a number of rather
compelling arguments suggesting that the second gu noun phrase in
such sentences is in fact direct object, the occurrence of ga versus o
being determined largely by independently motivated syntactic dis-
tinctions. Japanese would not, then, have an absolute one-one tie-up
between surface syntactic positions and morphological markers,
although the relation between the two is still very close. The same
solution is not possible for sentences like (57), and here Kuno (1973:
68) suggests that the first ga noun phrase derives from a genitive
attribute to the second, cp.
(58) Nihon no dansei ga tanmei desu
Japan’s men Subj have-a-short-life-span
Japan’s men have a short life-span
where the whole of Nihon no dansei (ga) ‘Japan’s men’ is a single
subject noun phrase. But when the noun phrase Nihon is extracted
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 19
from the larger noun phrase (by subjectivization (Kuno, 1973: 70)),
to give (57), the derived structure, even in Kuno’s terms, has two
subjects in one simplex sentence. Even though Kuno starts with the
a priori assumption that (in underlying structure) a simplex sentence
must not have more than one subject, his analysis leads to the con-
clusion that (in derived structure) such a configuration is possible,
and attested in Japanese.

4 EXTENDED
DEMOTION

In the languages examined so far, it has for the most part been the
case that when ES is demoted down the Hierarchy, it is demoted to
the next available empty position on the Hierarchy, unless of course
the language in question allows doubling on certain syntactic posi-
tions higher up the Hierarchy. However, even in some of the lan-
guages we have mentioned so far there are apparent exceptions to
this paradigm case. Although French in general demotes ES in this
way, when tbere is an overt E D 0 it is often also possible for ES to
be demoted to Obl, to a prepositional phrase withpar:
(59) Je ferai manger les gdteaux par Jean
I shall make Jean eat the cakes
However, this may not in fact be an exception to the paradigm case
of stepwise demotion down the Hierarchy if, as argued for instance
by Seuren (1972: 4-7), the occurrence of the prepositional phrase
with par arises through passivization of the embedded sentence.
The derivation of (59) would then be:
(60) a Je ferai ,JJean manger les gdteaux]
b Je ferai B[lesgdteaux manger par Jean]
c Je ferai manger les gdteaux par Jean
Causativization, which transforms (b) into (c), would demote les
gdteaux from subject position (in (b)) to direct object position in (c),
but would have no effect on par Jean. Other languages with similar
phenomena include Urdu (Bailey, 1956: 64-6), where ES of a transi-
tive verb may appear as I 0 (postposition ko) or Obl (postposition
se ‘with, by’) and Dutch (Seuren, 1972: 50-2).
20 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
In Sanskrit, it is in fact impossible for ES to appear as 10;if it
does not appear as DO (which may be a doubled DO), then it must
appear in the instrumental:
(61) Tim habhih khidayet
her (DO) by-dogs (Instr.) devour-Caus-Optative
He should have dogs devour her
Again, the passive analysis, rather than extended demotion,
may be able to account for the phenomenon. I want now to turn
to some examples where the passive analysis is rather less attrac-
tive.
In Hungarian, the subject takes no inflection, the direct object
has the ending -t, and the indirect object -nakl-nek (the variants are
conditioned by vowel harmony) :
(62) A no" adta a Jili-nak az almri-t
the woman gave the boy I 0 the apple DO
The woman gave the boy the apple
Causative verbs have the suffix -(t)at/-(t)et.With the causative of the
intransitive, ES appears as direct object:
(63) A tanuldk vdr -at -jdk a tandr -t
the pupils wait Caus the kacher DO
The pupils make the teacher wait
With the causative of a transitive verb, it is not possible for there to
be two direct objects :
(64) *A professzor kitisztit-tat -ta a szabd-t a
the professor clean Caus the tailor DO the
ruhrijri-t
suit DO
The professor had the tailor clean his suit
nor is it possible for ES to appear as an indirect object:
(65) *A professzor kitisztit-tat-ta a szabd-nak a ruhdjd-t
Instead, ES takes the sufKx -Val/-vel:
(66) A professzor kitisztit-tat-ta a szabd-val a ruhdjd-t
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 21
The basic use of the suffix -Val is to indicate the instrument, e.g.
(67) A tanuld ir a ceruzci-Val
the pupil writes the pencil with
The pupil is writing with the pencil
Modern Hungarian does not have a productive passive construction
for finite verbs, in the way that most European languages do. How-
ever, it does have participles that may take a passive construction, as
in :
(68) Az occst -vel kiildott levelez6lapot megkaptam
the his-brother by sent postcard I-received
(69) Az occse dltal kiildott levelez6lapot megkaptam
I received the postcard sent by his brother
(The form with a'ltal 'through' is sometimes found instead of -Val
in causative constructions, although my informant considered it not
in accordance with current usage.) Thus although Hungarian does
not have a fully-fledged passive, we may be able, on the basis of the
participial construction, to make some case for the passive analysis
with regard to causatives.
Finnish has essentially the same causative construction as Hun-
garian. When an intransitive verb is made causative, ES becomes
direct object, e.g. (examples from Volodin et al., 1969):'O
(70) Koko seura nauroi
all company laughed
The whole company laughed
(71) Han nauratti koko seura -n
he laugh-Caus all company DO
He made the whole company laugh
When a transitive verb is causativized, ES stands in the so-called
adessive case, with the suffix -lla/-lla. This case has a wide range of
functions, but includes that of instrument-although Finnish does
not have passive constructions, not even passive participial construc-
tions, with the underlying subject expressed in the adessive :
(72) Muurarit rakensivat talo -n
bricklayers build house DO
The bricklayers build the house
22 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
(73) Mina rakennutin talo -n muurarei -1la
I build-Caus house DO bricklayers Adessive
I get the bricklayers to build the house
As a final example, I want to consider the causative in Gilyak
(Nivkh), an unclassified language spoken at the mouth of the River
Amur and on Sakhalin Island in the Soviet Far East. In Gilyak,
there is one case, the absolute case, with no inflection, that marks
subject, direct object, and indirect object (Panfilov, 1962: 126):11
(74) Ytyk phmeot'u riykyn khim-d'
father his-gun elder-brother gave
Father gave his gun to my elder brother
The causative is formed in Gilyak by means of a suffix -gu. In the
causative construction, it is possible for ES to be expressed by a
noun in the absolute case, but this is rather unusual, being used
basically only with verbs in one of the numerous nonfinite ('gerund')
forms (Panfilov, 1962: 126):
(75) N'iPajan c'o l~yg -t vi-gu -d'-ra
I fish catch Gerund go Caus
I make Pajan go to catch the fish
The more usual construction is for ES to go into the dative-accusa-
tive case, with the suffix -ax. In fact, this is the only use in Gilyak
of this case-the name used by Panfilov is rather misleading. This
case is used irrespective of whether the verb in the causative already
has no EDO, EIO, or not (Panfilov, 1962: 131; 1965: 60):
(76) UtkuoHa ererx Zo -ax vi-gu -d'ra
son into-river fish Dat-Acc go Caus
The son let the fish go into the river
(77) N'i Xeugun-ax erx gala-gu -d'
I Dat-Acc to-him hate Caus
I made Xevgun hate him (lit. hate to him)
(78) Ytyk utkuoUIu-ax oxt ra -gu -d'
father son Dat-Acc medicine drink Caus
The father made his son drink the medicine
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 23
Thus Gilyak has the ultimate in extended demotion: in nearly all
cases, ES is demoted straight to the position of other oblique con-
stituents.
To conclude this section, we must re-examine the relation between
the passive solution, as outlined above with respect to French sen-
tence (59) with par, and extended demotion. In a number of lan-
guages, we find that ES may be expressed by the same means as
expresses the agent in the passive construction (e.g. French, Sanskrit,
Turkish, possibly Hungarian), and we must ask whether the oblique
cases (Obl) in such sentences arise by passivization, or strictly by
demotion, possibly extended demotion, down the Hierarchy. If
the passive solution were to be justified in all examples, then the
relevance of the Case Hierarchy to causativization would be
reduced, though not eliminated, in that the position Obl would
play no role.
In fact, the passive solution seems feasible for French, Sanskrit,
and Hungarian, of the languages we have examined in some detail.
For Finnish it is much less attractive, for the simple reason that
Finnish has no passive construction with the subject expressed in the
adessive (instrumental) case : a passive construction of this type
would have to be set up specificallyin underlying structure to account
for the causative. The passive analysis fails when applied to Turkish
where, it will be recalled, the postpositional phrase with turajindun
‘by’ may only be used with causatives that have both DO and 10,
although it is used to form passives where only DO is present, cp.
(24) and (25), repeated below:
(79) Adam kadin tarafindan dov-iil-dii
The man was hit by the woman
(80) * Dijci mektub-u mudur tarafindan imzala-t-ti
The dentist made the director sign the letter
Thus Turkish provides a clear example of the relevance of strict
stepwise demotion down the Hierarchy, the position Obl being called
into play only when required by the Hierarchy and constraints on
syntactic doubling. Gilyak, on the other hand, provides a clear
example of extended demotion, since the so-called dative-accusative
expresses neither Subj, nor DO, nor I 0 in simplex sentences, and
must therefore be Obl.
24 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
When ES is demoted to Obl, the Hierarchy does not make any
prediction as to which particular other oblique case it should stand
in, although in all the languages we have looked at, except Gilyak,
ES stands in the same case as the agent in the passive construction,
or in the instrumental (case used to express the instrument, e.g. the
adessive in Finnish). The passive analysis might seem to provide some
explanation for this, yet the same phenomenon occurs in Turkish,
where the passive analysis must be rejected on other grounds. The
generalization seems rather to be that wherever a subject noun phrase
is demoted to Obl, irrespective of the rule or convention responsible
for the demotion, it always moves to the same case within Obl. Thus
passivization and causative demotion would be expected to have the
same effect, and in each individual language the linguist will have
to look for other criteria to enable him to choose between the two
solutions.

5 CAUSATIVES PHENOMENON
AS AN INDEPENDENT

One of the effects of the various features that make up the ‘paradigm
case’ is that causative constructions and noncausative constructions
end up having, in derived structure, exactly the same syntactic
structure. Causatives of intransitives are just like noncausative tran-
sitives, and causatives of transitives are just like noncausative verbs
with a direct and an indirect object. There are two objections one
might make to this line of analysis, both of which would tend to blur
the distinction between noncausatives and causatives (or rather
more generally, superficial simplex sentences for which a complex
underlying structure with embedding is presupposed), if not eliminate
it a1together .
The first objection would be that there is no need to set up
for causative constructions a structure different from that for
ordinary nonderived verbs. If in surface structure causatives look
like noncausatives, why bother to set up a divergent underlying
structure with extra embeddings 7 The constraints of the ‘para-
digm case’ serve to bring this abstract underlying structure into
line with other surface structure types, but are only required be-
cause we chose to set up the abstract underlying structures in the
first place.
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 25
The second objection is almost the exact opposite of the first. It
grants that the underlying structure of causatives involves embedding,
but claims that this is equally true of other sentences that have
objects of various kinds. Seuren (1972) argues that indirect objects
(datives) in all languages arise through the displacement of ES (to
use our terminology) via the contraction of a matrix plus embedded
sentence into a simplex sentence; in the present paper, this is the
analysis proposed for surface I 0 deriving from ES. In his analysis
of*the verb kill as Cause-to-die Lakoff (1970: 98-100, and more
generally 9 1-107) argues that the superficially simple transitive con-
struction X kills Y derives from the underlying X causes [ Y to die]
(itself derived from X causes [ Y to become dead]);admittedly, Lakoff
is treating kill as a causative verb (which it may be semantically,
though not syntactically), but the analysis could conceivably be
extended to all transitive verbs.
However, both of these alternative suggestions fail to take into
account some of the variations on the paradigm causative construc-
tion. For instance, the second proposal outlined above runs into
difficulty with languages like Sanskrit that allow two direct objects
per simplex sentence: it predicts that the embedded subject should
become an indirect object. The first alternative suggestion can en-
compass these data, but would run foul of a language that allowed
double direct objects only in causative constructions. And neither
proposal makes any headway with Gilyak, where a distinct mor-
phological case exists only in causative constructions. It has been my
intention, in the body of this paper, to present an analysis of the
causative that is both sufficiently constrained to make interesting
predictions, and sufficiently flexible to accommodate the variations
on the causative that are found in different languages.
Even in languages that confirm more closely to the para-
digm case, there are sometimes other syntactic peculiarities that
set off causatives from other constructions. For instance, in
Japanese, the reflexive pronoun zibun can normally only be co-
referential with the subject of a simplex sentence (Kuno, 1973:
292-293), e.g.
(81) John ga Mary o zibun no uti de mita
Subj DO self 's house in saw
John saw Mary in his (*her) house
26 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
Where the verb is causative, however, the reflexive may refer to
either MS or ES (Kuno, 1973: 294-8):
(82) John ga Mary ni zibun no uti de hon o yom
Subj I 0 self 's house in books DO read
-use -ta
Caus Past
John made Mary read books in his/her house
On the one hand, this provides an argument for an underlying
structure where ES is subject of an embedded sentence (whence
zibun may be coreferential with Mary, both in the embedded sen-
tence); on the other hand, it sets off this causative construction from
sentences with nonderived verbs that might seem, semantically, to be
causatives, such as korosu 'to kill':
(83) John ga Mary o zibun no uti de korosita
Subj DO self 's house in killed
John killed Mary in his (*her) own house
(This argument for not deriving kill from Cause-to-die is given by
Kuno (1973: 298-9); other arguments are given by Shibatani
(1973b), who has extended this argument, and others, to Korean
(Shibatani, 1973a).) In Japanese, the class of syntactic causatives is
well-defined, and nonsyntactic semantic causatives clearly do not
belong to it.
In Tagalog, if we restrict ourselves to the prepositions that indicate
the syntactic functions of noun phrases in the sentence, then we
find that MS appears as derived subject, ED0 and EIO as derived
direct and indirect object respectively; while ES appears as direct
object if there is no EDO, otherwise as indirect object. So causatives
of transitives look just like transitives, and causatives of transitives
look like noncausatives with direct and indirect object. But Tagalog
has another way of obligatorily marking syntactic positions: one
of the noun phrases of the sentence must be focused, and the
morphology of the verb encodes which syntactic position has been
focused on. In noncausative sentences, there is one set of verbal
affixes for focusing on Subj, one for DO, one for I 0 (plus others
not relevant here for other syntactic positions). In causative con-
structions, however, there is a set of verbal affixes reserved for
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 27
focusing on ES, whether this is realized as DO or 10, and distinct
from the verbal affixes used for focusing on ED0 and EIO. If we
take verbal focus markers into account as well as the markers of
syntactic position on the noun phrases, then there is a clear dicho-
tomy between causative and noncausative sentence types. (Causa-
tives in Tagalog are discussed by Schachter and Otanes (1972: 321-
330), who use the term ‘indirect-action verbs’. The system is reason-
ably complex, especially in its interrelations with other aspects of
Tagalog syntax (marking of syntactic positions by prepositions,
coding of focus in the verbal morphology), and I hope to be able to
present a fuller report at a later date.)
Thus we see that several languages do make a rigid distinction
between causative and noncausative sentence-types, often by leaving
traces in other syntactic phenomena of a more complex underlying
structure with an embedded sentence. Even in languages that do
have such a distinction, we find a certain amount of give-and-take
between the two classes of verbs. Presumably most linguists, given
Abaza ba ‘see’, rba ‘show’, and the information that Abaza causa-
tives are formed by prefixing r-, would conclude that rba is a causa-
tive verb. But Allen (1956: 157) notes that rba follows the concord
type of a noncausative verb, which is distinct from that of a causa-
tive. Presumably in the development of the language rba has moved
from one class to the other. There are clear criteria for differentiating
between the classes, but individual verbs may belong to different
classes at different points of time; there is thus no conflict between
the ‘rigid dichotomy’ and the ‘give-and-takebetween the two classes’.
In languages that lack such clear criteria, on the other hand, indi-
vidual linguists may well disagree on whether a given verb is causa-
tive or not, and I see no reason why individual native speakers
should necessarily be expected to internalize exactly the same gram-
mar on the basis of such data.

6 CONCLUSION

Finally, I should like to emphasize that the validity of the Case

Hierarchy in linguistic theory is established quite independently
of causative constructions, along the lines suggested in Keenan and
Comrie (1972), using a cross-language comparison of relative clauses.
28 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
Thus, the Case Hierarchy is not in need of further validation from
the behaviour of causative constructions, although the existence of
such further validation provides independent grounds for assuming
that the Case Hierarchy is a part of linguistic theory. On the other
hand, the application of the Case Hierarchy to causative construc-
tions enables us to give a motivated explanation of why the causative
of an intransitive verb should turn up as a transitive verb with direct
object (in nearly all languages that have this type of causative con-
struction); and why the causative of a transitive verb should turn
up as a verb taking both direct and indirect object (in a large number
of unrelated languages). In the grammars of a large number of lan-
guages, belonging to various genetic, typological, and geographical
groupings, the Case Hierarchy leads to a unified account of the
syntactic properties of causative constructions.

King’s College
Cambridge

NOTES

* The work reported on in this article is part of a much larger project to investi-
gate the applicability of the Case Hierarchy to natural languages, which I am
carrying out together with E. L. Keenan (cp. Keenan and Comrie, 1972). We hope
to report in greater detail, at a later date, on other aspects of this work, which has
necessarily been condensed in articles for publication. Most of the work on
causatives has been carried out by myself, though in view of our close cooperation
on all aspects of the Case Hierarchy I should like to express my obligation and
gratitude to E. L. Keenan. Preliminary versions of this paper have been presented
to seminars at the universities of Bremen, Cambridge, and Hanover, and at the
October 1973 meeting of the Philological Society; I am grateful to all those who
participated in the ensuing discussions. I should also Iike fo thank my numerous
informants, without whose generosity and patience this paper could never have
been written.
The present paper contains all the theoretical apparatus I have built up as a
result of this work on causatives, though in the fuller version I hope ultimately
to expand considerably the exemplificatory material.
The following abbreviations are used throughout: Subj = Subject, DO=Direct
object, IO=Indirect object, Obl=Other oblique cases, M=Matrix, E=Embed-
ded, MS=Matrix subject, ES=Embedded subject, S=Sentence, V=Verb,
NP=Noun phrase.
1. In the present version I have not included a specificanalysis of French within
the framework I am proposing, although French examples are introduced to
illustrate various points of the discussion in terms of a more generally familiar
language. At many points of the discussion the reader familiar with French will
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 29
inevitably recall parallels between French and the language under discussion. For
recent treatments of the French causative, cp. Kayne (1969), Ruwet (1972:
126-80,254-67), Seuren (1972), and the literature there cited.
2. Perhaps by predicate-raising (McCawley, 1968: 73; Seuren, 1972), though
the particular mechanism used is not at issue here.
3. Where, as here, I establish correlations between (surface) syntactic positions
and morphological marking, it should be borne in mind that I am neither defining
the syntactic positions in terms of morphology, nor identifying surface syntactic
and morphological categories. In practice, morphological markers in many
languages do provide the most readily accessible exponent of syntactic positions,
and are therefore particularly useful in a brief exposition. For some languages
(e.g. Songhai in section 2, Sanskrit in section 3.2) other criteria are used for estab-
lishing syntactic positions, such as word order and susceptibility to passivization.
4. A sentence with two such indirect objects is cited explicitly by Sebiiktekin
(1971 : 82). Below (section 3.1) I discuss languages where doubling on the position
I 0 is possible. If some forms of Turkish do fall into this category, all this means is
that these forms of Turkish do not provide an instance of the ‘paradigm’ case
outlined in section 1.1.
5. At present, I have no real explanation for this generalization. Yet it is the
only one of (i)-(iv) to which I have not been able to find a clear counterexample.
An apparent counterexample is Georgian, which behaves like the paradigm case
until we come to causatives of noncausative verbs that have both direct and
indirect objects, e.g. of:
(i) Mdivan -ma da-cer-a mascavlebel-s ceril -i
secretary Subj wrote teacher I0 letter DO
The secretary wrote a letter to the teacher
Georgian has no possibility of moving ES lower down the Hierarchy than 10.
It is possible to construct the causative to (i) with two indirect objects (cp. (44)
below), but the preferred version is with EIO moved down the Hierarchy to Obl
(in fact, with the postposition -tvis ‘for’), ES moving into the vacated I 0 position
(Gecadzeetal., 1969: 144):
(ii) Mama-m da-a-qer-in-amascavleblis-tvis mdivan -s peril -i
father Subj write-Caus teacher for secretary I0 letter DO
Father made the secretary write a letter to the teacher
However, this is not simply a peculiarity of the Georgian causative. In the perfect
tenses, the subject of a transitive verb is transformed into an indirect object; the
original indirect object may either remain as such (since Georgian marginally
allows two 10s in a simplex sentence) or to be demoted down the Hierarchy to
Obl, with -tois (Vogt, 1971 :163-164):
(iii) Mdivan -s da-u-per-i-amasqavleblis-tvis peril- -i
secretary I 0 has-written teacher for letter DO
The secretary has (apparently) written a letter to the teacher
In Georgian, then, movement of I 0 to Obl to vacate the I0 position is required
quite independently of causative constructions, so the failure of condition (ii)
to hold need never be stated explicitly with specific reference to causative con-
structions. I hope to report in greater detail on the Georgian causative at a later
date.
6. This is interesting, in that Punjabi does have a constraint against doubling
on indirect objects in certain constructions. Direct-object-demotion transforms
30 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1974
certain direct objects into indirect objects. The rule is normally obligatory for
pronoun direct objects, but does not take place where there is also another in-
direct object:
(i) d n f i ( * 0 ) mez te rukkho!
it I 0 DO table on put
Put it on the table
(ii) Zuru may nri d (*nri) dpo!
just me I 0 it I0 give
Just give it to me
Thus different transformations may be sensitive to different degrees to restrictions
(whether absolute of tendencies) on syntactic doubling.
7. In Sanskrit, as in the older Indo-European languages generally, surface
structure syntactic positions are expressed, basically, by the inflectional endings
of nouns: Subj stands in the nominative, DO in the accusative, I0 in the dative;
the agent in the passive construction is in the instrumental (Obl.), like the instru-
ment in an active sentence. It will be recalled (see footnote (3)) that surface syn-
tactic positions and morphological categories are closely related, but not identical.
In Latin sentence (i) Athenus (accusative) is not a second direct object:
(i) Legutos Athenus rnitto
I send envoys to Athens
just as in (ii) it is not the first direct object:
(ii) Athenus iui
I went to Athens
cp. the impossibility of making Athens subject in the passive:
(iii) *Atheme itue sunt
Often, the possibility of transforming an accusative into a subject under the
passive transformation does provide a test, independent of morphological criteria,
of direct object status. Where a verb takes two direct objects, only one can be
made subject at a time, and the value of the passive test is reduced by the fact that
some languages place quite strict limitations on which direct object this must be
(compare, for Latin, Gildersleeve and Lodge (1895: 216); for Sanskrit, Mac-
donell (1927: 185), and examples (53)-(55) below).
8. There is one quasi-argument, but even this is circular, and seems based on a
dubious interpretation of the definitions of syntactic positions (syntactic relations)
given by Chomsky (1965: 68-73). Park claims that under Chomsky’s definitions,
only one NP per simplex sentence will be defined as subject. Even if this were true,
the argument would be no stronger than Chomsky’s definition of subject. Indeed,
Chomsky speaks usually of ‘the Subject-of the sentence’ (my italics-BC) (and
equally, of ‘the Direct-Object-of the Verb Phrase’ (my italics-BC), but I am
dubious about attaching too much weight to the presuppositions of the definite
article here, especially as Chomsky concedes (1965: 73) that his definitions are
probably too restricted anyway. A natural extension would be to define ‘subject
of a sentence’ as ‘(any) NP immediately dominated by S’, if this type of definition
is retained. The rule assigning the correct morphological marker to subjects will
operate irrespective of how many subjects there are. Both Japanese and Korean
lack subject-verb agreement, i.e. the most obvious example of a transformation
requiring identification of the subject of a simplex sentence.
9. More neutral means of expressing sentences of this type would be to
 BERNARD COMRIE - CAUSATIVES AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR 31
topicalize on m e of the ga noun phrases. But (57) and (58) are possible in Japa-
nese, a more accurate translation would be something like ‘it is I, and only I, who
like the film’, ‘it is in Japan, and only in Japan, that men have a short life-span’
(Kuno, 1973: 67).
10. It is sometimes argued that Finnish has no category ‘direct object’, since it
has no single morphological category corresponding to direct object, but uses
the nominative, genitive, or partitive. But this scepticism rests on an unnecessary
genuflection to morphological criteria; in fact, it is no more difficult to identify
a class of direct objects in Finnish than in better-known European languages, on
the basis of the full range of morphological possibilities in a given position.
11. Gilyak has cases that Panfilov (1962: 131-2,13942) calls dative-accusative
and dative-directional. But these are not used to express the indirect object. The
dativeaccusative is discussed below ; the dative-directional indicates motion
towards.

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