1. Introduction

1This study focuses on causative verbal periphrases. As Tesnière 1988, one of the first researchers in French Syntax, points out: “The normal causative auxiliary in French is the verb faire ‘make’ which has a fairly considerable number of uses. (a1. La condensation de la vapeur d’eau fait pleuvoir ‘The condensation of the water vapor causes the rain to fall’, b. Bernard fait tomber Alfred ‘Bernard knocks down Alfred’, c. Charles fait frapper Alfred par Bernard ‘Charles gets Alfred to be hit by Bernard’,2 (…)” (1988: 266)) or d. Elle me fait penser à une fleur ‘She reminds me of a flower’. In the causative structure, a new valence is expressed by the addition of another actant, a causative agent (b. and c.) or a causative source (a. and d.) of human nature (d.) or a natural element (a.) whose intervention can be direct (b. and c.), or indirect (a. and d.). While the canonical causative periphrastic construction in French is faire Vinf ‘make’, which is called a factitive, the causative form donner à Vinf ‘give’ corresponds to similar constructions encountered in several languages of typologically distinct families; Castilian, Khmer, Polish, Tibetan, Kurdish, among other languages (see Bouveret 2021, Akin & Bouveret 2021, Corre 2021; Gougenheim 1929, Newman 1996, 1998; Von Waldenfels 2012).

2We extended our analysis to the other causative French verbal periphrases in order to constitute the whole paradigm of faire Vinf ‘make’, mettre à Vinf ‘put’, laisser Vinf/laisser à Vinf ‘let‘ and donner à Vinf ‘give’. Our methodology is based on a set of seven criteria meant to analyze verbal constructions, which makes it possible to refine the notion of causativity in these periphrases. Causation is then analyzed the same way as other categories such as TAM (Tense, Aspect, Modality), namely as a grammatical category that can give rise to semi-auxiliaries or to complex causal predicates or, more broadly, verbal causal periphrases.

3The corpus consists of examples extracted from two sources: Europresse3 (newspapers and press reviews, year 2021), and Frantext-ATILF (database 9^th-21^st century), (as an additional source for diachronic examples, BFM 2019 (the ENS-Lyon database of medieval French 9^th-15^th century. Our theoretical model for the present study is Construction Grammar (CxG) (Bouveret & Legallois 2012, Goldberg 1995) with a special focus on the perspective applying constructional insights to foreign language pedagogy, more specifically the acquisition of constructions (see Boas 2022, De Knop 2020, De Knop & Gilquin 2016 and Gilquin & De Knop 2016).

2. Concepts and methodology

4We develop our approach by first explaining our criteria, which will allow us to contrast causative constructions, particularly when it comes to comparing different languages that take into account the whole causative construction and argument structure from a syntactic and semantic point of view. Then, we will compare the French causative periphrasis with these criteria in order to differentiate the four quasi synonym verbs in causative complex-predicate : periphrastic constructions built with an infinitive combined with a first predicate: faire, mettre, laisser, donner. The criteria we develop in this study will strongly help with differentiating and making a choice in order to help the foreign language learner figure out which relevant construction to use in a given context. Then, we observe different syntactic and semantic elements in the construction, such as the type of subject, direct, indirect, agentive, non-agentive, or the type of causation (internal or external (see criteria in section below 2.2.)) that have an impact on the meaning of the four similar causative constructions.

2.1. Causative periphrases

5The notion of causation is a fundamental category in the human conceptualization of the world and a cross-linguistic cognitive category (Sanders & Sweetser 2009, Shibatani 2002). As a universal property across languages, it refers to a complex reality, a causative situation, where someone or something causes someone else to act or cause a change of state / position of an object or a patient. Semantically, causative utterances involve at least two elements, a causative entity and an entity that undergoes the effect resulting from the cause. In other words, there are two events: a causative event and a caused event. The event caused is temporally subsequent to the causative event and the event caused is entirely dependent on the occurrence of the causative event.

6Dixon ranks the means of expression of causation on a scale of compactness (Dixon 2000: 74), in decreasing order, such as lexical causatives, morphological causatives and syntactic / periphrastic causatives. Causative value is inherent in the semantics of lexical causative verbs, which are the most compact. For causative verbs, the event caused is an integral part of the lexical information conveyed by the verb, for example, kill, break, close, etc. Generally, lexical causatives fall into three groups, depending on the type of result they encode: (a) change of state (crack, crumble, decompose); (b) change of location (sliding, spinning, swinging) and (c) emitting certain sounds or lights (shining, radiating, buzzing) (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1994). Some intransitive verbs, when used with a complement, can become causative (Novakova 2006) (resign / he resigned Claire). Morphological causatives include different morphological processes. The addition of a causative affix to the verbal root is the most common (e.g. -iser in standardiser, standard +-iser ‘make smth standard’). Syntactic causatives of the faire Vinf ‘make’ type are the least compact as they involve complex predicates. Those are the periphrastic causative verbs that we will focus on in this chapter.

2.2. Criteria for analyzing causative verbal constructs

7These criteria applied to verbal constructions are partly inspired by Dixon 2000, Gosselin 1996, Gosselin 2005, Gosselin 2011, Levin 1993, Levin & Rappaport Hovav 2005, Sanders & Sweetser 2002, and Shibatani 2002. They make it possible to contrast units of distinct levels, morphemes, periphrasis, lexical units, complex words or phraseological units. In order to differentiate the causative periphrases within the paradigm, we distinguish the following seven criteria:

8In our opinion, these criteria are necessary for analyzing any event structure, in particular causative constructions. Furthermore, in contrastive analyses across languages, using such criteria help with refining the comparison between distinct systems.

3. The French paradigm faire/ laisser/ mettre à/ donner à + Vinf

9The factitive construction faire Vinf ‘make’ is the most common and allows flexible syntactic properties: (a) every syntactic construction is accepted (direct and indirect transitive, intransitive, passive, pronominal, THAT), (b) It is construed with any type of infinitive, and (c) with any kind of subject (agent, patient, beneficiary, source). It is therefore the most typical construction but also the most syntactically flexible since it’s the only one amongst the four constructions to allow any argument structure and any subject in any possible causative situation, direct, indirect, mainpulative as seen above based on our Europress corpus. Faire ‘make’ can always be used when causality must be expressed, except with a permission value as opposed to the causative laisser Vinf ‘let’ construction (e.g.: let the dog out). The periphrasis of faire Vinf expresses direct, indirect or manipulative causality, but more typically it is used in a volitional agentive construction, contrasting with the laisser V‘let’ in permissive agentive uses.

10Donner à Vinf ‘give’ is typically associated with cognition verbs (think, believe, guess, reflect, meditate, etc.), in constructions where the subject is agentive or non-agentive of an indirect or direct causal nature:

11In this context, the construction does contrast with laisser Vinf ‘let’ in non-agentive factitive indirect uses:

or even faire Vinf ‘make’ in constructions with a patient, Paul la fait penser à son chimpanzé ‘Paul reminds her his chimpanzee’ (example extracted from and clitic analysis developped by Lamiroy & Charolles 2011: 9). They differentiate from the strong causation involved with agentive faire Vinf ‘make’ of a volitional direct nature:

12Thus, the constructions donner Vinf ‘give, faire Vinf ‘make’ and laisser Vinf ‘let’ appear with cognition verbs (penser, croire, réfléchir, etc.). Causativity in French in causal periphrases has been widely analyzed in the French linguistic literature for the verb faire ‘make’ (see Abeillé et al. 1996, Lamiroy & Charolles 2011, Tesnière 1988) but little for the verbs donner ‘give’ or laisser ‘let’ except Gougenheim 1929. We present the donner à Vinf ‘give’ construction in more detail with a specific focus on diachrony. Faire Vinf is commonly known as the factitive construction in French and progressively learned by children during language acquisition in French comparatively to donner à Vinf (see Benziska et al. 2010). We propose in this study our hypothesis of a give Vinf causative construction, whose causative meaning of the full lexeme comes from a grammaticalization process as a semi-auxiliary < full verb, and which is one of the typological meanings of to give across the world (Von Waldenfels 2012).

3.1. The construction donner à Vinf ‘give to Vinf’ from a diachronic and synchronic point of view

13The construction donner à Vinf ‘give to Vinf’ appears firstly attested in a written text of the 12^th-early 13^th century (BFM 2019 database):

14The following collocations are found in the BFM database with two classes of verbs, cognition verbs and food/drink or host verbs (13^thC à entendre ‘to listen’; 14^thC a boire ‘to drink’, a congnoistre ‘to know’4, a manger ‘to eat’ /15^thC : a hosteler ‘to host’ (à ‘to’ is found either with or without any accent).

15Medieval French still has a lot of phonetic variations, the different variations of the verb donner ‘give’ in abstract or concrete contexts are duner, donar, doner, donner. The construction is used most frequently by authors such as Christine de Pizan at the beginning of the 15^th century. This period is known as the Moyen français ‘Middle French’ (Abeillé et al. 2020).

16In parallel, the other constructions faire Vinf ‘make’ and laisser Vinf ‘let’ are found earlier. Faire Vinf ‘make VInf’ is first found in the 12^th in BFM 2019 texts (faire tenir ‘make hold’, faire disne ‘make dine’), also from the 12^th century pour laisser Vinf ‘let Vinf’ (laisser ‘let’+ prendre ‘take’, occir ‘kill’, aller ‘go’, ester ‘be’, perir ‘die’, cheoir ‘fall’). The other modal verbal periphrases in pouvoir Vinf ‘can’ are found earlier in Old French, since the 9^th century, for example pouvoir détourner ‘being able to divert’ read in Les Serments de Strasbourg (The Oaths of Strasbourg), first attested in a written text in Roman French dated from 842 (BFM 2019).

17Later, in Christine de Pisan, the periphrasis is extremely common:

18The verb donner ‘give’ in factitive constructions behaves as a factitive semi-auxiliary (cf. Gougenheim 1929; Bouveret 2021), and the construction takes on the value of a causative verbal periphrasis. Its values can vary from a simple factual causation to an obligation, a deontic modality.

19The construction donner Vinf ‘give’ is statistically weak, Willems (2005) mentions 6 occurrences in a contemporary corpus of 600 examples. The construction is, however, semantically rich, it is a polysemous construction, and, accordingly to our 2012 study based on three corpora representative of different discourse genres5, the construction is organized in four sub-classes (a, b, c, d, see below) wether a simply causative or a phraseological construction in our contemporary Europresse database (2021) and three classes (a, b, c) in the diachronic data Frantext-ATILF and BFM 2019 not mentionning the completely fixed phraseological construction. The (a) category includes the most abstract uses of the verb, whereas the other categories (b) to (d), even if phraseological, rely on concrete meanings of the verb:

20Thus, whereas the verbal causative periphrasis donner Vinf ‘give’ in diachrony is weakly attested from the 12^th to the 13^th century, it becomes more common between the 15^th and 16^th centuries, a period where other complex predicates expressions are plentiful, as argued by Fagard & De Mulder (2007).

21Nowadays, the construction (a), (b), (c) in Table 1 above, is a factitive construction similar to the faire Vinf ‘make’ kind, in which donner ‘give’ has a causative semi-auxiliary function, (d) is fully phraseological with an abstract meaning, coming from the concrete expressions and extended metaphorically and metonymically form concrete to abstract expressions, not present in diachonic corpora.

22A semantic value of transfer is conferred to the give Vinf construction still present in some of its causative uses. Indeed, the verb give as a full lexeme (Croft 1990, Goldberg 1995) belongs to two constructions of transfer: a CAUSED-possession construction, expressing a concrete physical transfer, and a CAUSED-result construction, expressing a mental transfer of experience. We now compare and contrast the four constructions based on their argument structures.

3.2. Constructive criterion and argumentative structure, faire, laisser, mettre à Vinf

23Faire Vinf ‘make’ is the most common construction, but also syntactically the most flexible construction, as it expresses all causal values except permission, which is typically expressed by laisser Vinf ‘let’. The subject with faire Vinf ‘make’ is often a direct source of the cause, an agent expressed directly or indirectly as in (12), or an indirect agent as in (13), or even a manipulative agent as in (14):

24Comparatively, laisser Vinf ‘let’ amongst the causative paradigm, allows a distance between the source of the cause and its effect, the effect produced is a modalization of the cause (15) and leads to phraseological expressions such as laisser à désirer ‘be unsatisfactory’ to express a negative opinion (16):

25In contrast, mettre à Vinf ‘put’ (17) has in general no causal value, except when construed with durative verbs, often cooking verbs and an agentive subject (18):

26(17) as a pronominal construction has no causative value whereas e.g. Mettre les asperges à blanchir/blanchir les asperges (author) (‘blanch the asparagus’) has a causation meaning. On the other side, il se mit à pleurer (author) (‘he began to cry’) is exclusively aspectual (and inchoative pre-processual phase explains se mit à ‘started to’, but no causal value is implied. In this agentive causative construction mettre à Vinf ‘put’ has a pre-processual inchoative value. The bi-valency is mostly common for mettre Vinf ‘put’, no third beneficiary argument is accepted, contrary to the three other verbal constructions faire ‘make’, laisser ‘let’, and donner ‘give’.

3.3. Modal criterion: factitive or deontic values

27The construction laisser à Vinf ‘let’ has modal permissive values (19):

28These two deontic values of permission or obligation require an agentive-type subject. In contrast, source-type subject constructions bear a factitive value (e.g. Ce voile laisse passer la lumière ‘This veil allows light to pass through’ (author).

29Besides the nature of the cause, its strength differs according to the four verbs in these causal periphrases. Laisser à Vinf, ‘let’ can be validated by an external source of validation, reality, or it can be a permission if one considers an implicit agent (20) whereas the negative modality has a jussive value since ne pas laisser Vinf ‘not let’ is equivalent to prohibiting (21):

30This deontic value is more typical with faire Vinf ‘make Vinf’ (22), but can also be found with donner à Vinf ‘give’ (23):

31On the other side, a simple factitive value is interpretable in (24), (25):

32In contrast donner à Vinf ‘give’ (25), compared to faire Vinf ‘make’ (24) adds a pre-processual aspectual phase to the event in (24) whereas (23) is simply causative. These pre-processual phases are theoretical perspectives in the TAM (Tense Aspect Modality) literature using intervals (Gosselin 2011), or particularly in the CXG TAM studies (Michaelis 2004).

Nous considérons ‘l’aspect de phase’, sous lequel est présenté un procès (état ou évènement), comme le résultat d’une opération de sélection d’une partie (phase) du temps constitutif de ce procès (…) ce temps constitutif ne se limite pas (…) au temps ‘interne’ du procès (i.e. compris entre ses bornes initiale et finale), mais englobe aussi les phases préparatoire et résultante du procès. (Gosselin 2011: 1)

‘We consider the phasal aspect, under which a process (state or event) is presented, as the result of an operation of selection of a part (phase) of the constitutive time of this process (...) this constitutive time is not limited (…) to the ‘internal’ time of the process (i.e. between its initial and final limits), but also includes the preparatory and resultant phases of the process (Gosselin 2011: 1).’6

4. Conclusion

33To conclude this study, we can say that even if in French faire Vinf ‘make’ is known as the most typical causative periphrasal construction (Abeillé et al. 1996, Gougenheim 1929, Tesnières 1988), other causative verbal periphrases are common and they are used in contexts as near synonyms depending on combinatorial criteria. Another interesting fact concerns the verb donner ‘give’ amongst these four causative periphrasal constructions, and its transfer value in Chinese, Dalabon, English, French, Khmer, Kurdish, Polish, Romanian, Spanish, Tibetan. The verb is expressed as a causative, a light verb, a derivational morpheme, or a directional preposition. Thus, it can be said that the form donner Vinf ‘give’ as a causative construction in French corresponds to a typological fact encountered in other languages of distinct families (Corre 2021, Gougenheim 1929, Newman 1996, 1998, Von Waldenfels 2012). Over time, the verb donner ‘give’ in French has gradually evolved by analogy with other verbal semi-auxiliaries. This is a case of linguistic change illustrating the grammaticalization of a verb from full meaning towards a semi-auxiliary construction. As a causative semi-auxiliary, it follows a “grammaticalization scheme” over several centuries such as other semi-auxiliaries of TAM (e.g. aller ‘go’ = full verb > aller ‘go’ = immediate future auxiliary> intentionality (see Traugott & Dasher 2002, Traugott & Trousdale 2013) but less developed in two stages instead of three. The criteria proposed in this study allow to describe the nature of the causativity in these French verbal periphrases and we hope it will be helpful to refine their uses. This will hopefully allow the French learners to use all of these four (faire, mettre à, laisser, donner à) + Vinf constructions more appropriately.