Causative Verbs : Structures & Examples

The causatives are the verbs that are used to indicate that one person causes another person to do something for the first person. One can cause somebody to do something for him/her by asking, paying, requesting, or forcing the person.

Causative Verbs:

• Have
• Get
• Make

This kind of verbs constitutes different structures for their sentences.

Have

Structure 1: 

Structure 2:

Get

Structure 1:

Structure 2:

Make

‘Make’ is stronger than ‘have/get’. It constitutes only one structure as it does not take anything ‘passive’ as its object.    

Note: According to the grammar rules and structures, there are two more similar verbs that are not causative verbs by definition but they constitute similar sentence structures.

Those two verbs are:

• Let
• Help

Let

‘Let’ means ‘allow/permit’ but the use of ‘let’ in the sentence is different from these words.

Structure:

The verb ‘permit’/’allow’ does not follow this structure. It follows the regular sentence pattern of English language.

Help

Help is not actually a causative verb either but is generally regarded as a causative verb because of its grammatical use in a sentence. It has two structures.

Structure 1:

Structure 2: