As we took up in this column last week,
intransitive verbs like “gone” and “disappear” are of the kind that can’t pass on their action to a direct object. This is why sentence constructions like “The magician
gone the rabbit” and “The magician
disappeared the rabbit” don’t work. The English language allows only
transitive verbs like “feed” and “eat” to take objects and act on them, as in “The magician
feeds the rabbit” and “The rabbit
eats the carrot.”
But this doesn’t mean that when the operative verb is intransitive, the subject can’t ever make an action happen to an object or make that object perform the verb’s action. In fact, there are verbs that enable an intransitive verb to cause its action to happen to an object. They belong to a class of verbs called
causatives, the most common of which are “make,” “get,” “have,” and “let.”
COURTESY OF ASHISH SHARMA FOLLOW HIS BLOG AT ENGLISHWITHASHISH.COM A causative verb works in either of two ways: (1) although the subject doesn’t perform the action of the operative verb, the causative can cause someone or something else to do it; or (2) the causative enables the intransitive verb to surmount its handicap of being unable to act on an object.
See how the causative verbs “make,” “get,” “have,” and “let” enable the intransitive verb “disappear” to cause its action to happen to an object: “The magician
made the rabbit disappear.” “The magician
got the rabbit to disappear.” “The magician
had the rabbit disappear.” “The magician
let the rabbit disappear.” The subject in these sentences is not seen as performing the action itself, but uses some other agency (“magic” or “sleight of hand”?) to perform that action.
And see how any of the same four causative verbs can make objects do the action of the intransitive verb: “She
made the dog jump.” “She
got the dog to jump.” “She
had the dog jump.” “She
let the dog jump.” This time, it’s clear that the “dog” is the object of the first verbs, “she” is the agent causing the action, and the action of the intransitive “jump” is what this agent causes the object to perform.
The same four causative verbs work not only for intransitive verbs but for transitive verbs as well: “The mother
made her child take the medicine.” “The movie director
had the leading lady wear a wig.” The big difference is that a transitive verb—working with a causative verb or not—always needs an object somewhere in the sentence for the latter to make sense. (Drop the objects “medicine” and “wig” from the two sentences given earlier, and both sentences simply collapse: “The mother
made her child take.” “The movie director
had the leading lady wear.”)
The English language has many more
causative verbs of the enabling kind, the most common of which are “ask,” “allow,” “command,” “compel,” “convince,” “encourage,” “employ,” “entice,” “force,” “hire,” “induce,” “insist,” “motivate,” “permit,” “persuade,” “require,” “suggest,” and “urge.”
Let’s now examine the ways of constructing sentences using causative verbs.
Most common is the construction where the causative verb is immediately followed by an
object (noun or pronoun), then followed in turn by an
infinitive (“to” + verb stem): “Some countries
require foreign visitors to present a visa.” “We
hired temporary workers to handle the seasonal demand.”
The causative construction above has a variant specifically for the causatives “let,” “had,” and “made,” which can only take the
“bare infinitive” (the infinitive without “to”): “Amanda
let her boyfriend kiss her.” “The mayor
had the illegal loggers face the irate townsfolk.”
The third type of causative construction is for the verbs “insist,” “suggest,” “ask,” “demand,” or “recommend,” which can neither take the infinitive nor the bare infinitive form of the operative verb. They can work only in
“that”-clause constructions like these: “The tour guide
suggested that we leave.” “The judge
demanded that the accused appear in court.” The second verbs are always in the base form, without tense.
This essay, 2143rd of the series, appears in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the March 23, 2023 digital edition of The Manila Times
, ©2023 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.Read this essay in
The Manila Times:
Helping intransitive verbs surmount their handicap (Next:
When the doer in the sentence is the object itself) March 23, 2023
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com. 
