A Study on Formation and Meaning of Causative Sentences

This paper investigates the correlation between the characteristics of long-form and short-form causatives and the characteristics of direct and indirect causatives based on the distinctions between causatives related to the syntactic and semantic properties. By investigating the raw data of causative sentences, we can figure out that the short-form causative can be divided into indirect and direct causatives, but we can also understand that there is no causative sentence that has meanings of both indirect and direct causation. Furthermore, we also figure out that the short-form causative can be divided into indirect and direct causative sentences, but it is not proven that a short-form causative sentence can be used for expressing indirect and direct causation simultaneously. The type distinction mentioned in this paper is based on the co-occurrence relation between short-form causative and the beneficiary Korean verb ‘juda’. Based on the observation reported above, it is claimed that the type of causative that can co-occur with the beneficiary verb ‘juda’ is actually the direct causative, meaning the indirect causative cannot co-occur with ‘juda’. However, an unusually long-form causative used with ‘-ge ha’ can co-occur with ‘juda’. Actually, it is well known that the long-form causative that can co-occur with ‘juda’ does not express the meaning of causation but rather expresses the meaning of permission. The long-form causative used in a permissive sentence is unusually replaced with the short-form causative, but this is only possible in the case in which the short-form causative expresses the meaning of direct causation. Based on this observation, it can be claimed that the causative form that is a short-form causative expressing the meaning of direct causation basically originated from the permissive sentence in which a long-form causative is used, and since the long-form causative was later changed to the short-form causative, the permissive sentence changed to the short-form causative and became to exist as it is now.