French causatives

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 20, 2012 at 4:31pm

So, just to make sure all readers know what we're talking about, causatives are these constructions involving "make", "let" or "have" in English with another infinitive, where effectively you convey an action of "causing" someone or something to carry out another action:

"I made the students finish their homework."

"I graciously let my parents do the housework."

"I had my roof re-tiled."

French causative are roughly similar to English, with a few differences. Some of the differences include issues that simply wouldn't really arise in English. For example, the clitics ("preceding object pronouns" like le, lui etc) cause a few complications whereas this type of word simply doesn't exist in English.

So essentially:

you can use faire roughly as the equivalent of English make, have or get, followed by an infinitive. For example, faire terminer = to make ... finish, to get ... to finish

you can use laisser roughly as the equivalent of English let, followed by an infinitive. For example, laisser faire = to let ... do

These are rough equivalents: you will find cases where French uses faire and English uses "let" and vice versa. For example, if some friends knock at the door and I say to my butler "Faites-les entrer!", you wouldn't say in English "Make them come in!" but rather "Let them (come) in!".

Two key differences between French and English:

- faire is not separated from the infinitive (laisser can be, though often isn't);

- the following infinitive can be interpreted as active or passive. So faire manger can in principle mean "to make (somebody) eat" or "to have (something) eaten"; laisser voir can in principle mean "to let (somebody) see" or "to let (something/somebody) be seen".

For example:

Je ferai manger le chien. = "I'll get the dog to eat something."

NOT: Je ferai le chien manger.

A key complication arises when the second verb has a direct object (e.g. "I'll get the dog to drink some water."). You might expect this to be the following in French:

*Je ferai le chien boire de l'eau.

And indeed, historically this construction appears to have been possible. But nowadays, speakers would say:

Je ferai boire de l'eau au chien.

In effect, you turn the object of the causative verb into an indirect object. (With laisser, you can also use this construction, though you can also translate it "as you'd expect": Je laisserai le chien boire de l'eau is OK.)

But that's not all! Things get even more complicated when one or more of the objects is a pronoun (clitic), especially with faire. There are two key rules to bear in mind:

- with faire, and optionally with laisser, the object of the second verb (the infinitive) is placed before the causitive verb. So "to have it eaten" becomes "le faire manger", not "faire le manger". (Notice that "le faire manger" could also mean "to make him eat".)

- where the infinitive has an object-- i.e. where you'd have used the à construction as above-- when this becomes a pronoun, the indirect pronoun is often, but not always, used. So: "Je ferai manger le biscuit au chien" > "Je lui ferai manger le biscuit".

This also means that occasionally you can end up with the pronouns next to each other, for example "I'll make him eat it" > "Je le lui ferai manger."

Now, where there's no "clash" of pronouns, you can actually use the direct pronoun in cases like this when you want to emphasise the notion of "forcing":

Je le ferai manger les biscuits.

(but as above, you could also use lui). This does work better with certain verbs: if the verb expressed an action that it was difficult to "force" somebody to do, then it would apparently be more common to use the indirect pronoun: so e.g. "Je lui ferai comprendre ces informations" because you can't exactly force somebody to understand something! And obviously if both objects are pronouns, you have no choice: you definitely can't say "Je le le ferai manger."

I mentioned that the infinitive can be interpreted as being passive. This means that you can miss out the agent, as in English. For example:

Je ferai réparer la voiture.

"I'll have the car fixed."

but you can also include it, either with the construction we mentioned with à, or with par:

Je ferai réparer la voiture par le mécanicien.

Je ferai réparer la voiture au mécanicien.

There's probably some other complications I've forgotten to mention, but I hope that helps as a start! As you can see, it's quite a complex subject.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 20, 2012 at 4:36pm

Oh yes, one other area of complexity occurs if you try to make the causative itself a passive. For example in English (notice the interesting feature of English that you insert the "to" in the passive, but not in the active):

The students were made to finish their homework.

Now logically, you would expect the following in French:

?Les étudiants ont été faits terminer leurs devoirs.

Now, would a French person actually say that in practice? The answer is that the situation appears to be quite complex: there are some situations where some speakers accept this construction, but passive causatives are by no means as universal as in English.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah on September 20, 2012 at 8:18pm

Thank you very much for such a great answer. :)

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Permalink Reply by Sarah on September 20, 2012 at 8:56pm

How are these sentences translated into French?

Bob had me drunk.
Bob got me drunk.
He had me stumped.
He got me stumped.
She had me stoned.
She got me stoned.
She has me spending.
She got me spending.
She has got me spending.
The music has me dancing.
The music has got me dancing.
The music got me dancing.

He got a new car.
He has it finished.
He got working on that.
I got him going on that.
He had us dancing/dance on the table 
He got us dancing/to dance on the table.
I had him see/seeing his advisor about that.
I got him to see his advisor about that.

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