2.1 The many faces of make

In addition to the inferences of causer intention (i) and causee resistance (ii), the inferences in (iii)–(v) have been put forward as candidates for entailments that are specific to the periphrastic causative make. These hold up quite well in the context of (1b):

1. that Gurung intended to bring about the dancing (Wierzbicka 1998)

2. that the children were unwilling to dance (“coercive causation”, Shibatani 1976; Dixon 2005)

3. that Gurung commanded or requested that the children dance (“directive causation”, Shibatani 1976)

4. that Gurung wanted the children to dance (Stefanowitsch 2001)

5. that the children were aware that Gurung wanted them to dance (Wierzbicka 1998)

Once we consider a wider range of examples, however, none of these inferences can be maintained as potential entailments of make. An example like (1b) can at most implicate (and not entail) causer intent or desire, because causative make occurs felicitously in examples where these features are explicitly denied.

Similarly, it is not possible that make asserts unwillingness or resistance on the part of the causee, since we readily find acceptable make-causatives in which the outcome is presumably desirable to the causee.

To complicate the picture further, it is not even possible that make simply asserts volitionality for its causer and causee. Once again, examples (4a–d) provide perfectly good uses of causative make with eventive causes, inanimate causers and causees, and effects involving involuntary (non-volitional) actions.

These data put us in a difficult position. It is hard to see, based on the range of uses for causative make, what the viable candidates are for entailments that make adds to a CAUSE core. On the other hand, the use of make clearly contrasts with each of the alternative periphrastic causatives in (1). Similarly, the use of make in the preceding examples contrasts with the causatives chosen in (5)–(6), where we have simply substituted have or get for make, modulo some minor syntactic changes to the causative complements to preserve grammaticality.

More striking still, there are contexts in which cause is appropriate, but make is not:

Insofar as the contrast in (7) indicates that make is more restricted in use than cause, it is clear evidence that make entails something which cause does not: but what can this be? We seem to have been painted into an analytic corner.

Against past analyses of make, which resort to treating it as polysemous (Wierzbicka 1998; Stefanowitsch 2001), we contend that the way out of the corner involves reconsidering our first hypothesis about the shared core of periphrastic causatives. In the next section, we show that the differences between cause and make statements are best explicated by giving up the idea that the notion of causation expressed by various causatives can be captured by a single relation, CAUSE. Instead, different causatives describe different ways of being a cause: in other words, they describe different types of causal dependence relations. The chief distinguishing feature of any causative verb, on our new hypothesis, boils down to the nature of the causal relation it predicates. Thus, while cause describes a relation of causal necessity, we argue that make instead predicates a type of causation more akin to Hume’s first definition: use of make entails that the causing event sufficed to guarantee the effect. Treating make in terms of causal sufficiency (to be spelled out in more detail in Section 3) allows us not only to predict the contrasts between make and cause, but also to predict and explain the inferences that arise only from make in examples like (1).

2.2 Two kinds of causal dependence

We have already seen that cause is felicitous in contexts where make is not, suggesting that make carries a component of meaning which cause lacks. As it turns out, there are also contexts in which make is felicitous, but cause is not, as we will see in Section 2.2.3. This suggests, in turn, that cause carries an entailment that is not part of the meaning of make. We want to suggest that the meaning specific to cause is one of causal necessity.

2.2.1 Counterfactual necessity

Following the approach pursued in Lewis (1973), many authors define cause-statements like (8a) in terms of an associated counterfactual conditional like (8b), linking the specified cause and effect.

(8)	a.	γIn total, the Napa fires caused the Vine Transit system to lose approximately $68,000 in revenue.5
	b.	If the Napa fires had not occurred, the Vine Transit system would not have suffered a $68,000 revenue loss.

Lewis takes the counterfactual statement to be partially constitutive of the causal relationship described by cause.⁶ Cause is thus taken to describe a relation in which the occurrence of the cause (possibly in conjunction with other events, which are left in the background by the cause-statement), moves us from a state in which the occurrence of the event was impossible to one in which it is possible: that is, a state where the effect is realized in at least one accessible world.

A number of authors, including Shibatani (1976), have taken for granted that the truth of make is similarly tied to the truth of a counterfactual statement. Shibatani treats make as a hyponym of cause (along the lines of our problematic first hypothesis). Wierzbicka (1998), despite treating make as multiply ambiguous, places a statement of counterfactual necessity at the center of each of her make constructions. A general form for Wierzbicka’s inferences is given in (9).

(9)
	where Y is the causee, X is the causer or causing event, and Z the eventuality denoted by the embedded VP.

Examples (10)–(12), and the counterfactual statements associated with them, are drawn from just three of the many make-constructions she identifies, and illustrate how (9) is purportedly related to make in each case.

(10)	Interpersonal make of “coercion”
	a.	She [Anand’s mother] … made Anand pump the tires [of the bicycle] every morning.
	b.	Anand would not have pumped the bicycle’s tires without some action taken by his mother.

(11)	Impersonal make of “subjective necessity”
	a.	A sharp hiss made her [Alice] draw back in a hurry.
	b.	Alice would not have drawn back (so quickly) if the sharp hiss had not occurred (or if it had been less sharp).

(12)	Impersonal make of “surprise”
	a.	The wind made the door slam shut.
	b.	The door would not have slammed shut if it had not been affected by the wind.

Although the counterfactuals do to some degree appear to be licensed by the use of the associated make-causatives, closer consideration of these examples shows that the (b) statements cannot be part of the asserted content of the (a) statements.

3.1 The circuit example: background situations and causal dynamics

We follow Schulz (2007) in using the Lifschitz (1990) light switch example to illustrate key ideas throughout this section.

As presented, the circuit example contains two kinds of information, separated into (20a) and (20b). (20a) sets out certain causal laws, a set of cause-and-effect relations that are known to hold between particular facts. (20b) describes a context (in which the laws in (20a) may be relevant) by fixing certain facts about the world. We refer to a specification like (20b) as a background situation, and a set of rules like (20a) as a causal dynamics.

In reality, no cause acts alone. In all but the most simple cases, any event C which brings about a second event E acts in concert with a set of other events (C₁, … C_n), as well as attending enabling conditions (for example, the failure of a preventative condition P).¹⁰ In other words, we always evaluate a claim of causal dependence between two events C and E with respect to a background situation that establishes a context of occurrence: a set of facts about the world that are not at issue in the discourse context.

A situation can be thought of as a part or partial description of a world.¹¹ It fixes some facts about the world, but may leave others unsettled (or undetermined). In a possible worlds framework, a situation therefore corresponds to a set of one or more worlds. For instance, in the circuit example, the situation described in (20b) fixes the position of both light switches, but leaves the state of the light unsettled. This situation might obtain in a world in which the light is on, or in a world in which the switches are in the same position, but the light is off. This situation therefore determines a partial state of affairs, leaving the undetermined fact – the state of the light – as a candidate for at-issue claims.

3.2 Normal causal developments

Once we fix the facts in (20b), only a world in which the light turns out to be off will accord with the causal laws in (20a). A world in which (20b) is true but the light turns out to be on “breaks” the established dynamics. If we take (20a) to be a complete specification of the relevant causal laws, and also take ourselves to be in a causally-normal world, then the only reasonable expectation is that (20b) will turn out to be part of a larger situation or world in which the light is off. More generally, once we have established that certain causal laws obtain, we expect that events will unfold in a manner that follows these laws. In other words, causal laws tell us what the normal causal developments of a given situation will be.¹² Adding the information that the light is off to (20b) represents a normal causal development of this background situation, but the situation which results from adding the information that the light is on does not. A normal causal development of a situation s is thus a causally-consistent supersituation of s: crucially, it agrees with any valuations in s, and includes facts that follow from these valuations by application of the causal laws. The process of calculating normal causal developments is iterative: having checked for causal consequences of a particular situation s, we can go on to check if the causal laws specify any additional developments, given the facts represented by s and its (immediate) consequences. We will be interested mainly in the maximal normal causal developments, i.e. in the normal causal development s′ of a situation s which is such that further calculations of causal consequences do not add any facts which are not already included in s′.¹³

The laws in (20) are represented graphically in Figure 1. The three nodes, S₁, S₂, and L, represent the three propositions that are relevant to example (20); S₁ indicates whether switch 1 is up (S₁ = 1) or down (S₁ = 0), S₂ whether switch 2 is up or down, and L whether the light is on (L = 1) or off (L = 0). Arrows represent relations of causal dependence between two propositions; the direction of the arrow indicates the direction of causation. In Figure 1, the states of the switches jointly influence L. The table on the right specifies the causal laws: it tells us what the process of normal causal development dictates for the state of L, given any combination of valuations for S₁ and S₂. We will rely on this type of graphical representation through the rest of the paper.¹⁴

Figure 1

Graphical representation of the circuit example.

Returning to situation (20b), the first switch is down, giving us S₁ = 0. The second is up, so S₂ = 1. L has not been determined. However, from the table in Figure 1, we can read off what the state of the light will be in a normal causal development of this situation; given S₁ = 0 and S₂ = 1, the light should turn out to be off (L = 0).

This is only what happens if everything proceeds normally. Various other things might happen under abnormal (or unexpected) circumstances: for instance, someone may have installed a master switch which (in context) assures that the light remains on. That such contingencies are not specified in (20) or Figure 1 reflects the assumption that they represent unusual or unexpected events, which crucially have not been taken into account in the discourse context.

Working with normal causal developments, as established by a causal dynamics, is therefore a species of closed-world reasoning (Reiter 1978). The implicit assumption is that what you see is what you get: the facts represented comprise all of the relevant ones, and what happens in the course of normal causal developments will depend only on this information. Put another way, the normality assumption is equivalent to the assumption that our mental model of a situation is complete and contains all of the relevant information.¹⁵ Inference within a framework of this sort is thus inherently defeasible: if we find that the actual world violates one of the established causal laws, we will conclude not that causality has broken down, but rather that our network must be missing relevant information, and may revise the set of relevant facts (and/or causal laws) accordingly.¹⁶

3.3 Causal necessity and causal sufficiency

We are now almost ready to define causal necessity and causal sufficiency. Consider a causative statement like (21). In any such statement, regardless of the choice of periphrastic causative, the occurrence of a particular causing event (C) is claimed to be causally responsible for the occurrence of a second event (E).

Causative claims like (21) are generally made relative to a particular discourse context, which we can represent with a background situation, or partial specification of facts about the world. In order to evaluate the truth of the asserted causal dependency between C and E, then, we first add the fact that C occurred to the background information, and then check the status of E with respect to normal causal developments from the resulting situation.¹⁷ Before defining particular types of causal relation, then, we need to establish the notion of adding a fact to a situation. For completeness, we also define the notion of subtracting a fact, which will become relevant when we provide lexical entries for cause and make.

With (22a) in hand, defining causal sufficiency becomes straightforward. In Section 2.2, we characterized causal sufficiency in terms of the “inevitability” of an effect, given its cause. This amounts to the following: a causing event C is causally sufficient for another event E just in case adding the fact that C occurred to the background situation guarantees that the effect occurs in the course of normal causal developments. Intuitively, we also want to ensure that the effect was not already inevitable prior to the occurrence of the cause; this guarantees that C and E are actually linked in the dynamics – that is, that there is a pathway between them in a graph like the one in Figure 1 (see Section 3.5 for further explication). This gives us Definition (23).

What about causal necessity? In Section 2.2, we drew a parallel between necessity and certain counterfactual conditional statements, noting that the claim that an event C was causally necessary for another event E is associated with the counterfactual claim that E would not have occurred without C. We want a causal necessity relation, therefore, to stipulate that E was not possible prior to C’s occurrence. Similarly, if there is a third event C′ such that adding C′ = 1 to the background situation produces E = 1 in the course of normal causal developments, the augmented situation must (first) guarantee C = 1 (or else we would have a route to E = 1 without verifying C). This gives us Definition (24).¹⁸

We return to the circuit example to see how (23) and (24) work in practice. Instead of (20b), let us consider a new background situation s = {S₁ = 0} which fixes the position of the first switch as down, but leaves the status of the second switch and the light undetermined.

Relative to s, S₂ = 1 is causally sufficient for L = 0 (i.e., setting the second switch to the up position is causally sufficient for the light to go off). Since, as illustrated by Figure 1, the state of the light depends on the position of both switches, s alone does not fix a value for L in the course of normal causal developments, satisfying (23a). However, if we add the fact S₂ = 1 to s, we get a new situation s′ = s + (S₂ = 1) which fixes L = 0 in its (first) normal causal development. This satisfies (23b).

Against the background situation s = {S₁ = 0}, it turns out that S₂ = 1 is also causally necessary for L = 0 (turning the second switch to the up position is causally necessary for the light to go off). We have already seen that (24a) is satisfied. (24b) is satisfied because s′ = s + (S₂ = 1) is causally sufficient for L = 0 and s′ is trivially a supersituation of itself. Finally, (24c) is satisfied because the only supersituation of s whose normal causal developments fix L = 0 is the situation s′, which fixes S₂ = 1.

In defining a lexical semantics for make (and cause) along the lines set out in Section 2.2, causal sufficiency and causal necessity are the central notions required. We have defined these relations in terms of the three components listed at the beginning of this section: a background situation, a causal dynamics, and a notion of normal causal developments (that is, a method for calculating how a situation is expected to evolve with respect to a set of causal laws). These components can be formalized in different ways, associated with different modeling choices (among others: Talmy 1988; Pearl 2000; Woodward 2003; Walsh & Sloman 2004; Kistler 2006; Wolff 2007; Hitchcock 2018). In Lauer & Nadathur (2018), we draw on the deterministic framework of Schulz (2011), which builds on Pearl (2000). This choice has certain consequences for how we define causal sufficiency and necessity, and these are reflected in the informal discussion in this paper.

At this time, we are not aware of significant differences that follow from the choice of an alternative underlying model. However, insofar as formalizing the components of causal dependency relations in different frameworks leads to different empirical predictions (about the appropriate use of make, cause, or other causative lexical items), we would like to suggest that these predictions will ultimately permit adjudication between frameworks. Consequently, although we do not engage in such comparisons here, comparing the predictions made as a result of different formal modeling choices will allow us to develop a more accurate picture of the structure and organization of our linguistic and cognitive conceptions of causation in the world.

3.4 Lexical entries for make and cause

Our top-level claim in this paper is that more than one kind of causal bringing-about relation is represented in the lexical meaning of causal and causative language. To illustrate this claim, we focus on the specific claim that cause and make each carry a bringing-about component that the other does not. More specifically still, we propose that make predicates causal sufficiency, while cause does not; we suggest additionally that cause carries a causal necessity entailment which make does not share.

There is a significant body of work in both linguistics and philosophy that deals with the precise meaning of the lexical item cause. Much of this literature argues that cause entails more than a necessity claim (counterfactual or otherwise), cashing out this additional meaning with varying degrees of complexity. While we are sympathetic to the basic premise that cause entails more than just causal necessity, we will not weigh in on the nature of any additional lexical components here (for instance, on the relevance or encoding of a “tightness” or “directness” requirement: Cruse 1972; Shibatani 1976; McCawley 1978; Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1994; Wolff 2003). Instead, for the remainder of the paper, we will focus on the causal necessity requirement of cause, in contrast with the causal sufficiency requirement of make. The toy examples presented illustrate the crucial necessity/sufficiency distinction, and thus we do not think it is necessary at this juncture to explore any additional components of cause. More broadly, all we wish to commit to, with respect to the lexical semantics of cause, is that it predicates at least a relation of causal necessity between cause and effect.

With this in mind, we let ⟦·⟧ represent the semantic interpretation function. We assume that ⟦·⟧ takes two contextual parameters: a dynamics D (the contextually-developed network of causal relationships), and a background situation s which partially specifies the evaluation world w_e. This reflects the fact that what we know, both about the state of the world, and about any causal laws which it obeys, is information that is built up contextually, and which can vary from one discourse context to another. We further assume, following Lewis (1973) and Dowty (1979), that causatives at base express relations between two facts or events. When the subject argument of a periphrastic causative statement is an entity or individual, we take this to stand in for some event in which the individual was a participant. We call this event C, and represent the fact of its occurrence by C = 1 (thus, in (25), either X = C or X is a participant in C). The effect E is represented by the composition of a causee/object NP and a VP complement:¹⁹ E = ⟦VP⟧ (⟦Y⟧), below. We propose the following semantics for make and cause:²⁰

For the Lifschitz example, given the background situation s = {S₁ = 0}, we showed that S₂ = 1 was both causally sufficient and causally necessary for L = 0. Taken together with the lexical entries in (25), this makes the empirical prediction that (26a) and (26b) are both felicitous and true in a situation where what we know is that the first switch is down.

The prediction, according to our intuition, is upheld.

3.5 Constraints on background situations

Not every partial specification of a state of affairs constitutes a reasonable background situation against which to evaluate causative claims. In this section, we examine some natural constraints on background situations, at the level of descriptive generalization. Ultimately, we would like a complete formal account to predict these constraints, as consequences of the structure of causal dependency relations, separate lexical presuppositions of causative verbs, or some combination thereof.

In fact, definitions (23) and (24) already incorporate constraints on the background, which serve to preclude vacuously true or false claims of causal dependence. The first constraint actually appears in (22) (which feeds (23) and (24)): since, for any situation s and (causing) fact C = 1, the augmented situation s + (C = 1) is defined only if s does not fix a value for C, the background situation for claims of causal necessity and causal sufficiency cannot contain either the causing fact or its negation. This is reflected in the lexical entries for make and cause, where we first subtract the causing event from the background situation before evaluating the causal claim. Intuitively, this is because evaluation of a causative requires us to – in some sense – isolate the cause from the remainder of the background situation before examining its relationship to its purported effect.

Definitions (23) and (24) also prohibit background situations which contain the caused fact E = 1, or guarantee it in the course of normal causal developments. This constraint appears as clause (a) of both definitions (23) and (24). Omitting this clause leads to vacuously true causal sufficiency claims: for instance, where a fact C = c can be found to be sufficient for E = e even if the dynamics does not encode any causal pathway between C and E. Conversely, omitting (24a) produces vacuously false causal necessity claims, since, if the background situation s guarantees E = e, then clauses (24b) and (24c) are not mutually satisfiable.

We lump these two constraints together in (27):

We now turn to an important constraint which is not already encoded in our definitions. This pertains to the temporal order of the events relevant for the assessment of a causative claim. For simplicity, we focus here on punctual events.

We will see this constraint at work below, in Section 3.6.3. Here, we note only its plausibility. Since causes, as far as we know, do not follow their effects, claims about the causal dependence of an event E on another event C should not take for granted facts that were not settled at the time that the causing event occurred (though they may have been settled by the discourse time). This is because they might, at the time that the purported causal chain was set into motion, still have turned out differently. Put another way, causative claims involve causal bringing-about relations: the question of whether or not C causally influenced E rests entirely on the consequences of C, combined with any facts that were settled in the temporal run-up to C’s occurrence time.

We will be concerned with one further constraint on background situations, which deals specifically with propositions encoding information about an agent’s desire or intention to perform specific actions. This constraint becomes relevant only in the context of make’s coercive implication, however, and we therefore discuss both in Section 4.1.

3.6 Illustrating the account

In this section, we examine a few scenarios. These examples are constructed in order to tease apart the causal bringing-about relations of necessity and sufficiency, as defined above. We show that our account, on which causative make predicates causal sufficiency but not causal necessity, and cause the reverse, makes the correct empirical predictions in these cases.

In Section 3.3, we illustrated the proposed definitions for make and cause using the Lifschitz example; in particular, we showed that, given a background scenario in which the first switch is known to be down, turning the second switch to the up position is both causally necessary and causally sufficient for the light to go off. This accords with our intuitions about the pair of sentences in (26), repeated here for ease of reference: if the first switch is down, both (29a) and (29b) are felicitous descriptions of the (causal) state of affairs.

The Lifschitz example has been useful in illustrating how a simple dynamics works, but the scenario referenced above does not allow us to check for the proposed distinction between cause and make. In order to do so, we need to consider scenarios in which the causal dynamics are more complex. The next scenarios allow us to tease causal sufficiency and causal necessity apart.

3.6.1 A necessary, but insufficient cause: the fire scenario

We first consider a relatively simple situation that illustrates the difference between cause and make in case of a necessary but insufficient cause. The fire scenario is represented as a dynamics in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Dynamics for the fire scenario. P = whether or not power was restored to the line, D = whether or not there were drought conditions, G = whether or not the grass was inflammable, L = whether or not the power line was downed, and F = whether or not the field caught fire.

(30)

The fire scenario. A fire burned a field outside town, starting immediately after the electric company restored power to a line that ran through the field, and which had previously been shut off. Due to a long drought, the grass in the field was unusually dry, and thus more susceptible to burning than usual. In general, a power line can spark a fire only if electricity is flowing and the comes into contact with something grounded and inflammable – for instance, dry grass. Unfortunately, there had not been an inspection of the area for several months, and so the condition of the line (i.e. whether or not it was downed) is unknown, and cannot be determined by direct evidence in the aftermath of the fire.21

In this situation, we have the following intuitions about cause and make:

(31)	a.	#Restoring power made the field catch fire.
	b.	Restoring power caused the field to catch fire.

In evaluating these claims, the relevant background situation contains the drought conditions and consequent inflammability of the grass, s_b = {D = 1, G = 1}. Against this background, we can show that the power restoration was a necessary but insufficient condition for the fire to start.

Causally speaking, s_b is a stable situation: it is its own maximal normal causal development. This is easy to see from Figure 2: G is the only direct causal descendant of D, and F the only descendant of G. G is already fixed by s_b, and F cannot be determined in the absence of values for P and L. Nothing much changes when we augment s_b with P = 1, s′ = {D = 1, G = 1, P = 1}. Since we still have no value for L, we cannot determine F, and P has no other descendants. This violates condition (b) for causal sufficiency, and, relative to s_b, P = 1 is not sufficient for F = 1.

Relative to s_b, however, P = 1 is causally necessary for F = 1. We have already seen that s_b cannot fix a value for F in its maximal normal causal development; this satisfies condition (a) for necessity. We need to check conditions (b) and (c). For (b), the supersituation of s′ = {D = 1, G = 1, P = 1} which ensures F = 1 is the proper supersituation s″ which contains, additionally, L = 1. Then s″ contains the three facts G = 1, P = 1 and L = 1, and its first normal causal development (which is also its maximal development) fixes F = 1. Condition (c) is also straightforward: given a situation s which does not contain = 1, the only way this fact can follow in the course of normal causal developments of s is if s contains values for P, G, and L (specifically, if s values all three propositions at 1). Since P has no causal ancestors, there is no way we can omit P from a situation s and still ensure the fire as a causal consequence of s. Thus, the only “route” to F = 1 must pass through P = 1, and the restoration of power is a causally necessary condition for the fire.

Thus, if cause predicates causal necessity, and make causal sufficiency, we predict that cause should be appropriate in the fire scenario (30), while make should not. These are precisely the intuitions reported in (31).

Suppose now that we alter the fire scenario slightly as follows: the day before the fire, a resident of the town had walked through the field, and observed that one post in the power line was down, bringing the line into contact with the ground. She shared this information with inspectors in the aftermath of the fire. In this case, our background situation s_b1 contains the fact L = 1, indicating that the power line was downed, as well as D = 1 and G = 1, as before. Against this modified background situation, P = 1 is both causally necessary and causally sufficient for the fire (the proof runs entirely parallel to the Lifschitz example). Given the additional information about the condition of the line, both (31a) and (31b) seem felicitous, as predicted by our account.

3.6.2 A sufficient but unnecessary condition: the bus scenario

We next consider a scenario involving a sufficient, but unnecessary cause. The bus scenario is represented as a dynamics in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Dynamics for the bus scenario. V = whether or not Ava is visiting, T = whether or not Ava is training for a race, G = whether the bike is gone or not, R = whether or not rain is forecast, B = whether or not Lia takes the bus to work.

(32)	The bus scenario. Lia has a high-end triathlon bike, which she rides to work almost every day. She takes the bus when rain is predicted for the evening, because it gets too cold to bike home in the rain. Occasionally, Lia’s friend Ava visits her. Ava is a pro cyclist. She gets up early and borrows Lia’s bike for training when she has a race coming up.
	At the moment, Ava is visiting. She has a race coming up in two weeks, and is in the middle of training. Rain is predicted for the evening.

In this situation, we have the following intuitions:

(33)	a.	Ava’s training made Lia take the bus to work.
	b.	#Ava’s training caused Lia to take the bus to work.

We consider the background scenario s_b = {V = 1, R = 1}. In this context, T = 1 is sufficient but unnecessary for B = 1.

The background situation s_b has no causal consequences. G is the only descendant of V, but its value cannot be determined without a value for T. B is a direct descendant of R, but since B is influenced by both G and R, B cannot be determined without a value for G. This satisfies condition (a) for causal sufficiency. Augmenting s_b with T = 1 gives us the situation s′ = {V = 1, R = 1, T = 1}. In this case, the first normal causal development fixes G = 1. Since the background contains R = 1, the second normal causal development fixes B = 1. This satisfies condition (b).

Relative to s_b, T = 1 is not necessary for B = 1, because s_b cannot satisfy condition (c). The situation s″ = {V = 1, R = 1, G = 0} fixes B = 1 in its first causal development, and does not contain T = 1.

Since T = 1 is sufficient but unnecessary for B = 1 in this scenario, our account predicts the judgements in (33).

3.6.3 The temporal constraint: the lighthouse scenario

Finally, we consider a simple scenario that illustrates the role of the temporal constraint. The lighthouse scenario is represented as a dynamics in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Dynamics for the lighthouse scenario. Q = whether the earthquake happens, S = whether the storms happen, L = whether the lighthouse collapses.

(34)

The lighthouse scenario. The lighthouse was built with a very sturdy foundation, designed to withstand high winds at the tower top, but the foundation sustained structural damage in an earthquake about ten years ago. Even that would have been fine, but this year, there were record-setting winds and the worst hurricane season anyone can remember, and given the prior damage, it could not take the extra strain.

The intuitive judgements for the possible cause and make claims in this scenario are as follows:

(35)	a.	The earthquake caused the tower to collapse.
	b.	The storms caused the tower to collapse.
	c.	#The earthquake made the tower collapse.
	d.	The storms made the tower collapse.

In order for our account to capture the empirical judgements in (35a) and (35b), it must be the case that both the earthquake and the storms represent necessary causes for the collapse. To capture the judgements in (35c) and (35d), the storm must be a sufficient cause, while the earthquake is not. As we show below, these are precisely the dependence relations encoded in Figure 4.

First, relative to the empty situation s_∅, both E = 1 and S = 1 are clearly necessary for L = 1. This explains the judgements in (35a, b). Second, relative to the situation s_E which fixes that the earthquake happened, S = 1 is sufficient for L = 1. Since s_E abides by all our constraints, we account for the judgement in (35d).

But there is no situation obeying our constraints relative to which E = 1 is sufficient for L = 1. The only such situation would be s_S, which determines that the storm happens. But, in the evaluation of (35c), s_S is not a valid background situation: it fixes the storm, which happens after the earthquake, and consequently violates the temporal location constraint. This allows us to explain the judgement in (35c).

Things are similar in the sports camp scenarios, repeated here for convenience:

(36)	I usually go to soccer camp in the summer. Last year I was thinking about going to band camp instead, and I could not make up my mind. Then I broke my ankle, which settled things.
	a.	I am so happy the injury made me skip soccer camp. I had the best summer ever!
	b.	??I am happy the injury caused me to skip soccer camp. I had the best summer ever!

In the variant in (36), clearly, the injury is a sufficient cause: a situation that contains the injury will normally develop into one in which the speaker skips soccer camp. But it is not a necessary cause, since the speaker might have decided not to go to soccer camp even without the injury.

The tennis camp example inverts the situation:

(37)	A bunch of things happened last summer which led me to skip tennis camp. First, I broke my ankle in the spring, and since it was taking a long time to heal, I started thinking about band camp for the first time. Then I got into a bad argument with my doubles partner, so even with my ankle getting better, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to tennis. Finally, my parents said they’d get me a new trombone if I went to band camp, which was pretty tempting!
	a.	?I am so happy the injury made me go to band camp. I had the best summer ever!
	b.	I am so happy the injury caused me to go to band camp. I had the best summer ever!

In this variant, the ankle injury led to the speaker skipping tennis camp only in concert with other factors, which occurred later (the fight, the parents’ offer of a new trombone). Hence, these contingencies cannot be fixed by the background situation for (37a), and the ankle injury cannot count as sufficient for going to band camp.

At the same time, while the scenario does not specify this, it is entirely possible that the fight and the offer alone would not have been enough for the speaker to go to band camp instead of tennis camp. In this case, the injury would be a necessary (contributing) cause for the speaker to go to band camp, licensing the cause in (37b).

4.1 The coercive implication

Consider the following examples, repeated from Section 2, both of which feature VPs representing volitional actions:

Both of these examples suggest resistance from the causee: that is, that the causee was unwilling to bring about the effect. We will call this inference the coercive implication of make, after Shibatani (1976), who refers to causal descriptions like (2e) and (10a) as instances of “coercive causation”.

As we saw earlier, (38) cannot be an entailment of a univocal causative make, because it does not arise across the board: recall examples like (3a), which feature VPs that are presumably desirable to the causee.

However, we believe that the inference of resistance or unwillingness in examples (2e) and (10a) arises as a consequence of a less specific implication, which is generally valid. We use the term implies deliberately in (38): ultimately, while coercive inferences are associated with the (asserted and presupposed) lexical content of make-causatives, they arise on the basis of context-dependent reasoning, and are thus best characterized as default pragmatic inferences (or perhaps generalized conversational implicatures, in the sense of Levinson 2000). To elucidate this, we return to our original make causative:

We do indeed tend to infer from (1b) that the children did not want to dance: the same inference does not arise if we replace make with cause or get, as in examples (1a) and (1d). Certainly (1b) is felicitously used to describe a situation in which Gurung overruled the children’s wishes in bringing about the dancing event (for instance, by threatening them with punishment). On closer consideration, however, (1b) could also be used to describe a situation where the children were in fact willing to dance, as long as the following is also true: whatever Gurung did would have brought about the dancing, even if they did not want to do it. Such a context might be one in which Gurung enjoys complete authority over the children, so that they have no choice but to obey an order from him. Consequently, they dance when he tells them to. (1b) is an entirely reasonable description of this situation, even if it also happens to be the case that the children were eager to dance. This suggests that what the choice of make in (1b) implies (by contrast to alternative periphrastic causatives) is not that the children were unwilling to dance, but rather that, given Gurung’s action, whether or not they wanted to dance had no effect on the outcome.

We believe that inferences about coercive causation are captured by the following descriptive generalization:

Here, if an agent makes a free decision, it means that they had a real option to do otherwise: that is, that they might have brought about a change in the effect by exercising their will. Our analysis predicts (39): a make which predicates causal sufficiency is well-suited to explain the source of a (weak) coercive implication of this sort. Intuitively, if (1b) describes a situation in which Gurung did something that was sufficient to bring about the dancing event, then the children could not have made a free decision to dance. If they had, then they might have avoided dancing by changing their minds: in other words, there would be a possible sequence of events in which Gurung’s action occurs and the causal laws are upheld, but no dancing takes place. But then, by definition, Gurung’s action did not make the dancing inevitable. Thus, the absence of a free decision about volitional effects seems to follow naturally on an analysis of make as a sufficiency causative.

To see how this intuitive explanation can be cashed out, we need to look more closely at what it means for a causing event to be sufficient for a volitional action in a dynamics. Intuitively, volitional actions are ones for which the intentions or desires of the agent (the causee, for present purposes) are relevant: volitionality has to do with the potential influence of an agent’s intentions upon an event’s realization. We therefore associate any volitional event V in a dynamics with a proposition W_V which encodes whether or not the (potential) agent of V wants V to come about. On this picture, the question of coercion then rests on the relationship between W_V, V, and the cause C associated with V by a make statement.²²

In order to fully capture the coercive implication, and thus to predict the behaviour of make, we will need to constrain this relationship. The following example illustrates why.

The permission context in (40) is modeled in Figure 5. The relevant causal laws specify that dancing follows only from the conjunction of the children’s desire to dance (W_D = 1) and Gurung’s explicit permission (G = 1). Since the background situation in (40) fixes the children’s will in the positive direction, Gurung’s action satisfies the requirements for causal sufficiency. According to the current analysis, then, make should be licensed. This contradicts the empirical judgement in (40a); our intuition is that this judgement is because (40) does not license the coercive implication. Gurung’s permission, while sufficient for bringing about dancing in view of the children’s pre-existing desires, does not eliminate the possibility of a free decision. Given the dynamics, the children could change their minds and consequently refrain from dancing, Gurung’s actions notwithstanding.

Figure 5

Dynamics for the permission scenario. W_D = whether or not the children want to dance, G = whether or not Gurung gives permission for them to dance, D = whether or not the children dance.

One way to rule out contexts like (40) would be to require that a background situation for make does not fix the value of a will/desire proposition for the effect. Insofar as this requires leaving intentions as an open issue, it seems to get at the ability of agents to change their minds. In the absence of a background valuation for W_D in (40), Gurung’s permission will not be sufficient to bring about the dancing, as per definition (23). However, there are felicitous uses of make which clearly fix the intentions of a causee as part of the background: moreover, these examples include “prototypical” uses of make with a volitional VP. (41) satisfies not only the weak version of the coercive implication in (39), but also the stronger form in (38).

Make is acceptable in the command scenario, even though the background fixes the children’s desire with respect to dancing (W_D = 0). We certainly do not want to rule out the use of make in this type of context, so it cannot be the case that make does not admit background situations which fix desire predicates. Moreover, changing the constraint so that it only precludes background situations which fix desire propositions in a result-conducive direction will not solve the problem: this would fail to capture the judgement in (42), which represents precisely the type of context that a weak coercive implication like (39) is intended to cover.

In (42), Gurung’s command is coercive not because it produces an outcome at odds with the children’s established will, but instead because it renders their desires irrelevant to the question of dancing. This is what we would like to capture: the agent/causee’s intentions should not be able to make the outcome for a volitional action in a dynamics, if we take it for granted that the cause occurs.²³

This leads us to the following constraint:

(43) rules out permission scenarios like (40). Since W_D = 0 is sufficient for D = 0 in the presence of the cause (Gurung’s permission), make requires that W_D cannot be fixed in the background. On the other hand, ¬W_D is not sufficient for ¬D, relative to s + (G = 1), in either of the command scenarios (which have the same dynamics, shown in Figure 6, and differ only in terms of the background setting of W_D); thus make can be evaluated in contexts where W_D is determined.

Figure 6

Dynamics for the command scenarios. W_D = whether or not the children want to dance, G = whether Gurung commands them to dance, D = whether or not the children dance.

The constraint in (43) also allows us to capture the coercive implication for a third type of scenario, in which the make-cause is sufficient for the make-effect because of its consequences for the intentions of the agent (=causee). These kinds of contexts include cases of persuasion or bribery, as in (44), where Gurung brings about the dancing by making it so that the children cannot but want to dance. Crucially, his action in this case precludes the possibility that they will change their minds.

In the persuasion context illustrated in Figure 7, W_D = 0 is sufficient for D = 0 (in both the presence and absence of the cause); thus we require that W_D is not fixed by the background situation. This allows us to capture not only the judgement in (44a), but also the fact that, in persuasion contexts of this sort, the intentions of the agent depend upon the presence of external factors (and thus, intuitively, if the causal laws are obeyed, should not be determined in the absence of a determination for their causal ancestors).

Figure 7

Dynamics for the persuasion scenario. W_D = whether or not the children want to dance, G = whether Gurung plays their favourite song, D = whether or not the children dance.

A more complex persuasion example comes from the naturally-occurring case of the social smoker in (45).²⁴

Here, the author is not claiming that her friends physically force her to smoke (thus making her own intentions irrelevant). Instead, her claim is that the presence of her friends (and/or their actions, viz. their smoking), together with attendant circumstances, such as the author’s presumed addiction to nicotine, and habits she has consequently formed, create in her a desire to smoke when she is in the presence of her friends. Consequently, her friend’s presence is sufficient to bring about smoking. The Maddow show example, (15), is similar: Potter does not claim that his experience at the healthcare expedition directly led him to quit his job, but rather that it fixed his opinions/intentions about the matter in such a way that quitting became inevitable. A positive consequence of the volitional action constraint as formulated, then, is that it captures not only the prototypical “coercive” scenarios, but also the weaker sense of coercion that applies in persuasion situations.

Compared to the constraints discussed in Section 3.5, the volitional action constraint is much more limited in its applicability. As stated, this constraint is only relevant for make-causatives. Essentially, (43) represents a lexical presupposition of make. We see this as an improvement over attempts to encode a coercive implication, as per Shibatani (1976) or (38), into the entailments of make. The volitional action constraint produces the coercive implication as a consequence of restrictions on the structure of background situations: we avoid referring directly to the volitionality of an effect in the meaning of make, while still producing the coercive implication just in case a volitional action is involved. Make constructions without volitional effects will automatically satisfy the requirements of (43).

The volitional action constraint appears rather natural once we consider that sensitivity to questions of desire/intention appears to be a feature of the English causative system. If we compare (1b) with (46), in which make has been replaced by let, we find that (46) is appropriate in precisely those contexts in which the volitional action constraint rules make out; the reverse is also true.

More specifically, let is appropriate in the permission scenario (40), where make is not, but is not appropriate in the command or persuasion scenarios, where make is felicitous. This suggests that let – which, like make, can also occur in a range of contexts involving non-volitional effects – is also a sufficiency causative, but carries a presupposition (in the form of a constraint on background situations) that is complementary to (43). Extrapolating farther, if this type of constraint is a peculiarity of the English causative system, then we might reasonably expect that sufficiency causatives in other languages show different types of background restrictions. One particularly interesting case comes from German causative lassen, which can be used to paraphrase both let and make statements in English, and would be appropriately used in all three types of contexts discussed above (permission, command, and persuasion). We pursue an analysis of lassen as a sufficiency causative lacking a coercive implication in Lauer & Nadathur (2018).²⁵

We would like to raise one final point in the discussion of make’s coercive implication. In addition to prototypically volitional actions, such as dancing, and prototypically involuntary actions, such as blushing or turning red, make can also appear with actions that are in some cases volitional and others involuntary. In the examples in (47), make is felicitous due to the inherently involuntary nature of the result.

As we have noted, make is also felicitous in cases where the effect might (in some slight variation of the given context) have been brought about due to the causee’s volition, but where the cause was ultimately sufficient for the effect because it overruled the causee’s will. Since our understanding of the background possibilities are different in these configurations, we get a stronger coercive implication in command cases than we do in fully involuntary cases like (47). What we wish to emphasize is that a view of the coercive implication based on the descriptive generalization (39) and the attendant volitional action constraint (43) allows us to capture this relatively subtle distinction, while seeing how command-type coercion is, causally speaking, similar to cases where a result is produced involuntarily. The baseline commonality between both involuntary responses and coerced volitional actions is the concept of a free decision – or, rather, the intuition that, in both cases, the causee was not able to make a free decision about realizing the effect of a make-causative.

4.2 Causal “perfection”

In Section 2.2 we saw that certain make sentences seem to license an inference of (counterfactual) necessity – i.e., that the cause was a necessary condition for the effect to be realized. We showed that these necessity implications could not belong to the entailed content of a make-causative, because it is possible both to cancel them and to felicitously use make in contexts which explicitly preclude the necessity of the cause for the effect (e.g., the soccer camp example (16)). Nevertheless, many make sentences convey (and are evidently intended to convey) a necessity relation as a pragmatic inference. In this section, we discuss how this inference can be explicated on a sufficiency analysis of make.

“Exculpatory” uses of make provide perhaps the clearest example of make-causatives which are intended to convey necessity (as well as sufficiency). (48) gives two examples of the exculpatory use.

In both examples, the speaker not only wants to convey that her hand was forced by the cause (i.e., that the coercive implication was true, and she did not make a free decision), but also that she would not have taken the actions she did had she not been forced to do so – that is, if the cause had not been present. This second implication carries the (counterfactual) necessity inference.

Salient as this implication is in such cases – indeed, if (48b) is presented as a legal defense, it may be the main point that the speaker wishes to convey – we believe that it represents a pragmatic enrichment of the entailed content of a make-sentence. This claim is supported by applying some the classic implicature tests: cancellability, reinforcaeability, and calculability.²⁶

We have already seen that the necessity inference is optional, or cancellable based on context: it is not produced by all uses of causative make, most notably those that occur in contexts with which it is incompatible. As noted in Section 2.2, the first soccer camp example (16) is just such a necessity-denying context (but, crucially, is a fully felicitous use of make). It is also possible for a speaker to explicitly suspend a necessity inference without causing infelicity, as in (49).

Finally, the necessity inference can be freely reinforced, without producing a sense of redundancy:

We are unable to present a detailed account here of how the necessity implication of make is derived, and thus cannot definitively show that it is calculable. However, we believe that it is predicted by a sufficiency analysis of make, by analogy to a previously-established pragmatic inference. That is, if our hypothesis about make is correct, the necessity inference can be calculated as a particular instance of a more general pragmatic tendency for expressions of sufficiency to be enriched with necessity relations as well.

This tendency is extremely well known. We refer, of course, to the “invited inference” of conditional perfection (Geis & Zwicky 1971), where a conditional statement of the form If p, (then) q is taken to additionally convey that q is not true in case p fails to hold.

The literature on conditional perfection contains a wide range of proposals for the precise mechanism(s) by which it is calculated (see, among others van der Auwera 1997; Horn 2000; von Fintel 2001; Franke 2009; Nadathur 2013; Herburger 2015). However, it is widely agreed that the inference represents a systematic enrichment or strengthening which arises from balancing or weighing the entailed content of the conditional statement against the informational needs and context at the point in a discourse where the conditional is used (see also Robert 2012[1996]: on the question under discussion). Insofar as the reasoning involved in evaluating a make causative parallels the reasoning used to evaluate conditional statements (see footnote 13), we believe that a successful account of conditional perfection will also parallel or even directly provide an account of the calculation of causal perfection – the tendency for statements of causal sufficiency to implicate causal necessity as well.²⁷