Chapter 74The Productive Causative -re, -te, and -e

74.1 The productive causative suffix

The productive causative adds a causer to the argument structure of an intransitive or transitive base. Its forms -re, -te, -e are selected by the final sound of the base Nakagawa (2024: 200); Satō (2008: 235–237). In a simple intransitive causative, the former subject becomes the causee object and the causer becomes the new subject.

The examples and environments follow Nakagawa and Satō's explicit lists Nakagawa (2024: 200); Satō (2008: 236–237). Lexically selected endings such as -ka and -ke require a separate account; see Chapter 75 (Lexical Verb Pairs and Causative -ka).

74.2 The causee in a narrative clause

The narrator enters and is represented as the object of the causative. The third-person causer has no overt person prefix. Nakagawa contrasts this with a luggage example using ahun-ke. He describes a tendency for -ke to occur with things and the productive causative with volitional participants Nakagawa (2024: 202, examples 196–197). This is a lexical and constructional contrast, with stated tendencies rather than a complete animate–inanimate partition.

74.3 Permission, coercion, and causal distance

Satō gives both permissive and coercive readings of causatives. In his permissive example, a parent lets a son go down to town because the son wants to go. His coercive example describes a rough child making other children cry Satō (2008: 237). Bugaeva likewise allows contextual permission and coercion, contrasting this with an earlier coercive-only characterization that she attributes to Fukuda/Tamura Bugaeva (2014: 139, 142) ‹contested›.

Direct versus indirect causation concerns how the causing and caused events are related. Bugaeva distinguishes this from permission versus coercion. With an ingestive verb such as “eat,” the participant and event can favor a direct feeding interpretation or an indirect interpretation in which someone is made or allowed to eat Bugaeva (2014: 141–142). Age or animacy alone does not turn those readings into a permission–coercion contrast.

74.4 Productivity and the limits of a formation

Bugaeva treats -re/-te/-e as productive while excluding avalent weather predicates from this suffixal derivation in her account Bugaeva (2014: 134, 144). The handbook more broadly describes such predicates as generally resistant to valency alternations Bugaeva & Kobayashi (2022: §4.1.2). The restriction concerns the construction; it does not state that weather can never be described as having a cause.

Accent supplies another morphological comparison. Bugaeva contrasts causative kú-re with rejected final stress in the same form, while a lexical vowel formation such as mak-á has a different pattern Bugaeva (2014: 131, 134). These published forms support her distinction between productive suffixation and lexical formation, within the varieties she examines.

74.5 Transitive bases and a Horobetsu proposal

Causativizing a transitive base can retain its original object alongside the causee. Some derived causatives can themselves take further causative morphology Bugaeva (2014: 142–143); Nakagawa (2024: 135). The argument structure and interpretation of such forms are treated in Chapter 76 (Causees and Multiple Causative Layers).

In a study of Horobetsu epic texts, Takahashi proposes that causatives can also contribute to tracking whether linked clauses share a subject. His proposal distinguishes coordinated and subordinate contexts Takahashi (2017: §§4–5; 106) ‹speculative›. The introductory suffix examples in that article come from Tamura's Saru description Takahashi (2017: 99). The clause-linkage proposal rests on the separate Horobetsu textual material.