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The categories of causation

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Abstract

This paper is an essay in what Austin (Proc Aristotel Soc 57: 1–30, 1956–1957) called "linguistic phenomenology". Its focus is on showing how the grammatical features of ordinary causal verbs, as revealed in the kinds of linguistic constructions they can figure in, can shed light on the nature of the processes that these verbs are used to describe. Specifically, drawing on the comprehensive classification of English verbs founds in Levin (English verb classes and alternations: a preliminary investigation, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993), I divide the forms of productive causal processes into five classes, corresponding to Aristotle's ontological categories: there are processes that cause change in location, in state, and in quantity; and that lead to the creation and destruction of substances. These broader categories are then subdivided into other ones, corresponding to different Levin classes, according to further differences in the causal processes they involve. I conclude by discussing the relevance of this argument to research in metaphysics and experimental philosophy.

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Notes

  1. It doesn’t matter to our purposes whether the verbal and nominal ‘cause’s should be counted as one word or as two (the latter being the standard position among linguists).

  2. Things are no different with the nominal ‘cause’, as COCA returns ‘problem’, ‘crash’, ‘fire’, ‘accident’, ‘disease’, ‘explosion’, ‘war’, ‘crisis’, ‘problems’, and ‘death’ as the ten most common nouns following the phrase ‘cause of the …’. For a similar result, see Stubbs (1995).

  3. As Siobhan Chapman pointed out to me, this phenomenon could be explained in Gricean terms: since saying only that something has been “caused” (to do such-and-such) provides very little information as to the nature of the connection at issue, the Cooperative Principle requires that, where possible, we describe causal processes using specific verbs that supply more informative descriptions of what has happened. But there is also a more radical explanation, namely that the relevant ‘caused’-sentences are false or nonsensical in circumstances where corresponding lexical constructions are easily available. I myself favor the latter position, but can’t possibly defend that view here—though for a sense of how it would go, see my discussion of the use of ‘voluntarily’ in Schwenkler (forthcoming, pp. 19–21).

  4. For another such list, see van Inwagen (2012, p. 163): “‘push,’ ‘pull,’ ‘strike,’ … ‘turn,’ ‘annoy,’ ‘comfort,’ and ‘kill.’” In a footnote (ibid., n. 9) he adds ‘eat’ and ‘write’ as two more examples of causal verbs. Cartwright (2004, pp. 814–817) calls these words for “thick causal concepts”, echoing Williams’s (1985) talk of “thick” ethical notions.

  5. For a related use of ‘schema’, see Vendler 1957/1967; and cf. Jackendoff’s (1990) notion of “conceptual structure”. In this paper I’ll often use ‘form’ because of its Aristotelian undertones.

  6. On causation by omission, see McGrath (2005), Wolff et al. (2010), Henne et al. (2019), Clarke et al., (2015). On the second family of concepts, see Talmy (1988), Wolff (2007), Sloman et al., (2009).

  7. Here I am grateful to an anonymous referee.

  8. For important discussion of how constructions are an indispensable element in linguistic meaning, see (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2011).

  9. I speak “uses” rather than “senses” to avoid committing myself to saying that, e.g., ‘kick’ has different meanings in (2), (3), and (4). This issue is complicated, of course: for a position that is similar to mine in spirit but perhaps different in the details, see Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995, ch. 5) discussion of what they call “regular polysemy”. I thank Juan Piñeros Glasscock for pushing me to be clearer on this point.

  10. Except when it becomes unbearably stilted, throughout this section I will mainly use ‘object’, ‘entity’, and ‘thing’ to describe that which is acted on or affected in a productive causal process; ‘agent’ to describe that which affects it; ‘process’ and ‘act’ to refer to the causal process itself; and ‘one’ (or ‘someone’) and ‘she’ (or ‘they’) as my generic pronouns for presumptively animate agents or targets of action.

  11. As Reimer explains (ibid., pp. 14205-14206), this distinction is similar to, but not quite the same as, Jennifer Hornsby’s (2011) distinction between mediated and unmediated forms of causation, as some ways of acting on objects through the use of machines count as mediated by Hornsby’s criteria while nevertheless being forms of causation-as-control. For other related discussion, see Rowland Stout’s analysis of what he calls “ballistic actions”, which are actions “where the agent is in control of initiating a process which results, and is intended to result, in the goal of the action, but where the agent has no intention of being involved … in the action beyond setting up this process; their agency is going to be completely withdrawn from the process” (Stout 2018, p. 220). By contrast, in a non-ballistic action “the agent is involved throughout the process that results in the intended goal, with some … level of control until the goal is achieved” (ibid.).

  12. I thank Juan Piñeros Glasscock for prompting this clarification.

  13. Thus Anscombe places acts like kicking, abandoning, leaving alone, dropping, holding, and picking up within the class of what she calls “vital descriptions”, or descriptions that “go beyond physics” and are “basically at least animal” (Anscombe, 1963/2000, p. 86; for discussion see Schwenkler, 2019, pp. 166–167). A similar point is made by Reimer (2022, pp. 14204–14205).

  14. To give one example, while the prepositional dative can also be used in a way that involves no notion of possession, the double object construction cannot be: thus one can throw a dish to the ground but not ?throw the ground the dish, and haul the trash to the dump but not ?haul the dump the trash. (What makes the latter phrases unacceptable is that neither the ground nor the dump is a potential possessor of the things in question, nor indeed of anything at all, but the double object construction requires this interpretation.) Strangely, however, some verbs that clearly involve transfer of possession nevertheless don’t tolerate the double object construction: e.g., one can donate money to a charity but not ?donate a charity money, and return an item to the store but not ?return the store an item. A widespread view is that some, though not necessarily all, of this variance is determined by the phonology of the verb in question. For an important discussion of this matter, including experimental evidence supporting the role of phonology, see Gropen et al., (1989), especially Experiment 2.

  15. Or, again: the “product” of reciting (in contrast with writing) a poem is not the poem itself, but the recitation of it. The same point applies to the objects of ‘hum’, ‘whistle’, and ‘sing’ when these verbs are used transitively. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for suggesting these formulations.

  16. As I discuss in the Appendix, this category does not map neatly onto any Levin class.

  17. More specifically, Aristotle (1955) identifies three characteristics of this kind of change: “(a) that every part of the growing magnitude is greater (for example, if flesh grows, every part of it grows); (b) that it grows by the accession of something; and (c) that it grows because that which grows is preserved and persists” (Gen. et Corr. I.5, 321a20-23; and cf. Gen. An. II.1). I thank Nathanael Stein for the reference.

  18. I mean to echo Anscombe’s (1958/1981b) diagnosis of the state of modern moral philosophy; but cf. also this remark of Austin’s on the sense-datum theory of perception:

    … it is a typically scholastic view, attributable, first, to an obsession with a few particular words, the uses of which are over-simplified, not really understood or carefully studied or correctly described; and, second, to an obsession with a few (and nearly always the same) half-studied ‘facts’. … The fact is, as I shall try to make clear, that our ordinary words are much subtler in their uses, and mark many more distinctions, than philosophers have realized … It is essential, here as elsewhere, to abandon old habits of Gleichshaltung, the deeply ingrained worship of tidy-looking dichotomies. (Austin 1962, p. 3).

    I thank Nat Hansen for reminding me of this passage.

  19. While most of the time this strategy is simply taken for granted, even without comment, here is what looks like an explicit endorsement of it by Bradford Skow: “… the most fundamental causal locution is ‘X caused Y to Z by Ving,’ where terms for things (that are not events) go in for ‘X’ and ‘Y’” (Skow, 2018, p. 19). (Admittedly, I don’t know well enough what ‘most fundamental’ means in this context to be totally sure what Skow is saying.) An exception that proves the rule is Byrne (2021), in which it’s argued that lexical causatives should be analyzed in terms of a notion called make, whose meaning is about equivalent to the English word of the same name: so ‘Annie breaks the window’ should be read as ‘Annie makes the window break’, rather than as ‘Annie causes …’. I have doubts about this analysis, but even if it were successful there are many English causatives that just are not susceptible to it: e.g., carry, throw, pour, draw, build, devour, etc. all do not have intransitive counterparts that could be said to be made to occur.

  20. In that paper, Davidson’s other paradigms of singular causal statement are ‘The flood caused the famine’ and ‘The burning of the house caused the roasting of the pig’—the second of which is definitely a mouthful. At another point (ibid., pp. 697–698) Davidson reflects briefly on the semantics of ‘Flora dried herself (with a towel on the beach at noon)’, though without considering what it would take to rephrase it in canonical form.

  21. Baz (2017) is a forceful discussion of these hazards. As he writes, in the standard methodology of analytic philosophy the function of judgments about cases is.

    … to anchor our philosophical theorizing, to ensure that our theories are actually beholden to X, or at the very least to our concept of X (or to the meaning of “x”), and not merely to compelling pictures of X that we have formed for ourselves, or to misguided theoretical assumptions to which we have grown attached, whether individually or communally. (Baz, 2017, p. 62).

    By contrast, when the judgments we’re supposed to make are expressed in awkward or unusual language, there’s little chance that they can serve this function. A new longitudinal study of the “intuitions” of undergraduate philosophy majors supports the hypothesis that philosophical education has the kind effect that worries Baz: Maćkiewicz et al. (2023) studied responses to a number of different cases as students progressed through their undergraduate training, and found that these judgments moved in the direction of philosophical orthodoxy mainly to the extent that the cases were directly discussed in class. As the authors argue, these findings are a poor fit for the idea that philosophical training leads to general expertise in philosophical judgment; instead, the likelier hypothesis is simply that, in the classroom context, “the student is required to know the canonical analysis and interpretation of certain thought experiments, and, having learned what they are, may simply adopt the corresponding beliefs without much deliberation” (Maćkiewicz et al., 2023, p. 44).

  22. That’s a vexed question, to say the least. For influential arguments that it doesn’t, see Fodor (1970) and Wierzbicka (1975); and for a different view see Lewis (1986, pp. 184–188). Among linguists, the idea that certain verbs contain a hidden semantic element commonly named ‘cause’ (or ‘because’) is not supposed to mean that they can be paraphrased with English ‘cause’-sentences. For development of that idea, see e.g. Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995, ch. 3) and Pietroski (2005, ch. 3); and for textbook treatments see Goddard (2011, ch. 10) and Swanson (2012, Sect. 3).

  23. I am grateful to Robert Reimer for illuminating discussion of this matter.

  24. See https://philpapers.org/browse/experimental-philosophy-causation; accessed 29. September, 2023. These studies are, respectively, Hitchcock & Knobe (2009, Experiment 1); Icard, (2015, Experiment 1); Alicke et al., (2011, Study 1); Kominsky et al., (2015); Knobe & Fraser, (2008); Lombrozo, (2010, Experiment 1a); Henne et al., (2021); Rose, (2017, Study 3); and Henne et al., (2019, Experiment 1a).

  25. As Hornsby puts it: “The generic notion of ‘causing’ [that unifies Anscombe’s list] is something that we glean when we bring the verbs together: we understand it by recognizing the causative character that unites them” (2011, p. 107). For related discussion, see Steward’s response to Anscombe’s (1981a, p. 136) claim that “everyone will grant that physical parenthood is a causal relation”:

    Will everyone grant that physical parenthood is a causal relation? It sounds strange to modern ears, perhaps, to say that a parent is the cause of their child. But it sounds less strange to say that the parents begat or conceived or gave birth to the child and then in turn to insist that begetting and conceiving and giving birth are causal relations. (Steward, 2022, p. 8).

    In fact, the idea that parenthood is a causal relation has been taken by some bioethicists as the ground of parents’ duties to their children: for a recent defense of that view, see Porter (2014).

  26. Here I echo (Ryle 1949/2009, pp. 59–60).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 810 S. Wright St., Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    John Schwenkler

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Partial financial support was received from the John F. Templeton Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Association.

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This paper took a very long time to write, and I incurred many debts along the way. I’m especially grateful to Nat Stein for helping me think through the project in its earliest stages, to Avner Baz for getting me to see how I could finally pull it together, and to the referees at Synthese for their incredibly patient and perceptive feedback on the manuscript. In addition to the Berlin workshop on Philosophy’s Experimental Turn and the Challenge from Ordinary Language, which was generously funded by the Fritz-Thyssen Foundation and where Siobhan Chapman gave insightful comments on my talk, I also presented versions of this paper to the X-Phi Under Quarantine series, the University of Chicago Practical Philosophy Workshop, the University of Manchester Philosophy Research Seminar, the LFE Colloquium at Universität Leipzig, the FSU Philosophical Psychology Group, the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, and Kevin Reuter’s research group at the University of Zürich. I thank the audiences on those occasions, and—along with those mentioned above—especially Marshall Bierson, Bob Bishop, Jason Bridges, Christopher Frey, Ned Hall, Nat Hansen, Evan Jones, Markus Kneer, Josh Knobe, Eric Marcus, Zac Odermatt, Juan Piñeros Glasscock, Robert Reimer, Kevin Reuter, Brad Skow, Joel Smith, Justin Sytsma, and Mike Zahorec for feedback and discussion. Finally, special thanks to Lara Reglero for introducing me to descriptive linguistics. My work on this project was supported by a Fellowship for Experienced Researchers from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and an Academic Cross-Training Fellowship from the John F. Templeton Foundation.

Appendix: Summary outline of the categories of causation

Appendix: Summary outline of the categories of causation

  1. (A)

    Ways of causing change in place

    1. (A.i)

      ...that is purely in physical position:

      1. (a)

        Affecting a thing’s location by imparting motion to it:

        • Throw Verbs (§17.1): e.g., hit, kick, throw—these describe ways of “‘instantaneously causing ballistic motion’ … by imparting a force” (Levin, 1993, p. 147; citing Gropen et al. (1989)).

        • Slide Verbs (§11.2): e.g., slide, roll, float—these are “transitive verbs of causing a change of position” in which “[t]he agent simply brings about the change of location described by the verb, but does not accompany the moving entity” (Levin, 1993, p. 134).

        • Some Send Verbs (§11.1): e.g., send, ship, transport—these “relate to causing an entity to change location” in such a way that its “motion is ‘mediated by a separation in time and space, sometimes bridged by a particular means of transfer’” (Levin, 1993, p. 133; quoting Pinker 1989, p. 110).

      2. (b)

        Affecting a thing’s location by accompanying its motion:

        • Carry Verbs (§11.4): e.g., carry, drag, haul, tote, tow—these “relate to the causation of accompanied motion” (Levin, 1993, p. 136).

          • NB: Causation by accompanied motion often involves the agent being “entangled” in some manner with the object that is moved, as described by Hold Verbs (§15.1) like clasp, clutch, grasp, grip—these “describe prolonged contact with an entity, but … do not describe a change of possession or a change of location” (Levin, 1993, p. 145).

        • Bring and Take Verbs (§11.1): bring, take—these are “verbs of continuous causation of accompanied motion in a deictically-specified direction” (Levin, 1993, p. 135; quoting Gropen et al., 1989).

        • Drive Verbs (§11.5): e.g., drive, cart, parade, run—these “describe the causation of accompanied motion” in a way that “inherently specif[ies] something about the manner of motion, typically the vehicle or means used” (Levin, 1993, p. 136).

        • Some Run Verbs (§51.3.2): e.g., run, rush, walk, used in the form <V X to Y>; and perhaps likewise some Waltz Verbs (§51.5).

      3. (c)

        Directing a thing to a location (and possibly a special manner of rest):

        • Put Verbs (§9.1): e.g., put, set, place—these “refer to putting an entity at some location” (Levin, 1993, p. 112).

        • Most Verbs of Putting in a Specified Direction (§9.4): hoist, lift, lower, raise—these “relate to putting an entity somewhere, typically by moving it in a specific direction”. The exception here is drop, which might belong with the verbs in (A.ii.c), on the assumption that the dropped object was originally held in the sense discussed under (A.i.b).

        • Verbs of Putting in a Spatial Configuration (§9.2): e.g., dangle, hang, lean, stand—these are verbs of putting that further “specify the particular spatial configuration that the placed entity ends up in with respect to the location” (Levin, 1993, p. 112).

        • Coil Verbs (§9.6): e.g., coil, twirl, whirl, wind—these “relate to putting something around something else” (Levin, 1993, p. 117).

        • Some Tape Verbs (§22.4): e.g., anchor, bolt, cement, lock, tape.

      4. (d)

        Affecting a thing’s location merely in virtue of impacting it:

        • Hit Verbs (§18.1): e.g., bang, bump, knock, used with a resultative construction specifying the direction of motion.

      5. (e)

        Affecting a thing’s location in a way that relates specially to a form of bodily motion:

        • Breathe Verbs (§40.1.2): e.g., breathe, spit, sweat, vomit—all of these “relate to emitting a substance from the body”, while ‘breathe’ “can also describe taking air into the body” (Levin, 1993, p. 218).

    2. (A.ii)

      … with respect to a surface or container (see (B.i.a) for related discussion):

      1. (a)

        Moving a thing onto a surface or into a container:

        • Spray/Load Verbs (§9.7): e.g., cram, inject, load (concerning containers) and brush, scatter, spray (concerning surfaces), used in the form <V X into/onto Y>: these “relate to covering surfaces and putting things into containers” (Levin, 1993, p. 188).

        • Funnel Verbs (§9.3): e.g., dump, funnel, hammer, squeeze—these “relate to putting an entity in some location in some manner” (Levin, 1993, p. 114).

        • Many Pocket Verbs (§9.10): e.g., bag, box, cage, coop.

      2. (b)

        Moving a thing off a surface or from a container:

        • Clear Verbs (§10.3): clear, clean, drain, empty, used in the form <V X from Y>: these “relate to the removal of a substance from a location” (Levin, 1993, p. 124).

        • Wipe Verbs (§10.4): e.g., erase, flush, rake, vacuum, used in the form <V X (from Y)>: these are like Clear Verbs except in that they also “lexicalize a manner or means of removal” (Levin, 1993, p. 126).

      3. (c)

        Causing a thing to move by releasing it from containment:

        • Pour Verbs (§9.5): e.g., dribble, drip, pour, spill.

          • NB: The causation here is by a kind of cessation, as an entity that once was held or contained in certain place is then let to move on its own due to an inanimate force.

    3. (A.iii)

      … involving an element of possession:

      1. (a)

        Moving something into someone else’s possession:

        • This notion is essential to the meaning of some Send Verbs (§11.1), such as hand and slip.

        • It is also widely available for the verbs discussed under (A.i.a-b), with an animate entity as the recipient (e.g., ‘toss/slide/carry/deliver/take the package to the boarder (vs. border)’).

      2. (b)

        Moving something into one’s own possession:

        • Many Get Verbs (§13.5.1): e.g., fetch, gather, pluck.

        • Some Pocket Verbs (§9.10): e.g., bag, pocket, sheathe.

  2. (B)

    Ways of causing change in state …

    1. (B.i)

      … that is purely physical:

      1. (a)

        Affecting the state of surfaces and containers:

        • … by filling containers:

          • Some Spray/Load Verbs (§9.7): e.g., cram, fill, load, used in the form <V Y (with X)>.

          • Some Fill Verbs (§9.8): e.g., clog, plug, saturate—these “typically describe the resulting state of a location as a consequence of putting something on it or in it” (Levin, 1993, p. 120).

        • … by covering surfaces:

          • Some Spray/Load Verbs (§9.7): e.g., brush, dust, drizzle, slather, used in the form <V Y (with X)>.

          • Many Fill Verbs (§9.8): e.g., blanket, cover, pave, shroud.

          • Many Butter Verbs (§9.9): e.g., butter, oil, salt, water—these are verbs whose “meaning can be paraphrased as ‘put X on/in (something),’ where X is the noun that the verb takes its name from” (Levin, 1993, p. 121).

        • … by emptying or clearing a surface or container:

          • Clear Verbs (§10.3): clear, clean, empty, drain—used in the form <V Y of X>, in which they lexicalize “a state that can hold of a ‘location’ as a result of removing something from that location” (Levin, 1993, p. 125).

          • Wipe Verbs (§10.4): e.g., erase, flush, sweep, wipe and brush, filter, rake, shovel—used in the form <V Y (clean, clear, free of X)>. These divide into two subclasses, depending on whether they lexicalize a manner or an instrument of removal.

      2. (b)

        Affecting the material form of a thing:

        • … by altering its shape:

          • Bend Verbs (§45.2): e.g., bend, crease, crumple, fold—these “relate to a change in the shape of an entity that does not disrupt its material integrity” (Levin, 1993, p. 243).

        • … by affecting its material integrity:

          • Break Verbs (§45.1): e.g., break, chip, shatter, tear—these “refer to actions that bring about a change in the ‘material integrity’ of some entity” (Levin, 1993, p. 242; quoting Hale and Keyser 1987).

          • Cut Verbs (§21.1): e.g., cut, saw—these are like Break Verbs except in that they further specify something about “the instrument or means” by which a separation in material integrity is affected (Levin, 1993, p. 157).

          • Carve Verbs (§21.2): e.g., dice, prune—these sometimes specify “the nature of the result” of a process of separation, as in the case of ‘dice’ (Levin, 1993, pp. 157 and 158).

        • … by removing something from it:

          • Pit Verbs (§10.7): e.g., core, gut, pit, weed—their meaning “could be paraphrased as ‘remove X from (something),’ where X is the noun zero-related to the verb” (Levin, 1993, p. 130).

          • Some Debone Verbs (§10.8): e.g., debone, debowel, devein.

      3. (c)

        Altering the surface appearance of a thing:

        • … by coating its surface:

          • Verbs of Coloring (§24): e.g., color, dye, stain, varnish—these “describe changing the color of an entity, usually the application of some coating that covers the surface of the entity and, therefore, changes its color” (Levin, 1993, p. 168).

        • … by creating an image or pattern on its surface:

          • Some Verbs of Image Impression (§25.1): e.g., embroider, engrave, stamp, tattoo—these are verbs “relating to the creation of images on surfaces” (Levin, 1993, p. 169). These also have a creative use that is discussed under (C.ii.b).

          • Illustrate Verbs (§25.3): e.g., autograph, decorate, illustrate, label.

      4. (d)

        Combining things:

        • … into a homogeneous stuff:

          • Some Mix Verbs (§22.1): e.g., blend, mix.

          • Some Amalgamate Verbs (§22.2): e.g., amalgamate, incorporate.

          • Some Shake Verbs (§22.3): e.g., beat, scramble, whisk (together).

        • … in a manner that preserves their original integrity:

          • Some Mix Verbs (§22.1): e.g., combine, commingle.

          • Some Amalgamate Verbs (§22.2): e.g., conjoin, entwine, entangle, interweave.

          • Some Shake Verbs (§22.3): e.g., bundle, gather, jumble, mass.

        • … by attaching them to one another:

          • Tape Verbs (§22.4): e.g., bolt, connect, fasten, join, link, pin, solder, staple, tape, tie (together)—these differ from the classes above in that their meanings “relate to the manner/means in which things are combined, rather than the result of the combining” (Levin, 1993, p. 163).

      5. (e)

        Separating things (here there is room to apply the further distinctions drawn under (B.i.d)):

        • Separate Verbs (§23.1): e.g., decouple, disentangle, separate, sever—these “have meanings that specify the endstate of their direct object and not the means or manner in which this endstate is reached” (Levin, 1993, p. 165).

        • Split Verbs (§23.2): e.g., pry, pull, split, tear—these “manifest an extended sense which might be paraphrased as ‘separate by V-ing,’ where ‘V’ is the basic meaning of that verb” (Levin, 1993, p. 166).

        • Disassemble Verbs (§23.3): e.g., detach, disconnect, unleash, unzip—in contrast with Separate Verbs, the meaning of these verbs “includes a specification of the manner or means in which a separation can be brought about, without specifying the result of this process” (Levin, 1993, p. 167).

      6. (f)

        Causing other kinds of physical change:

        • Other Alternating Verbs of Change of State (§45.4): this is a large and motley class that includes “a variety of verbs that relate to externally caused changes of state” (Levin, 1993, p. 246), such as those:

          • … in temperature: e.g., cool, heat, chill

          • … in size: e.g., compress, expand, shrink, enlarge, inflate, deflate, deepen, narrow, widen, heighten, lengthen

          • … and in other respects: e.g., clean, dirty; wet, soak, moisten, dry; melt, thaw, freeze; harden, soften; ignite, extinguish; open, shut; lighten, darken; loosen, tighten; etc.

    2. (B.ii)

      … that involves a social dimension:

      1. (a)

        Altering what is possessed:

        • … by taking possession of something, possibly from someone else:

          • Steal Verbs (§10.6): e.g., confiscate, grab, pilfer, steal, take, wrest.

          • Verbs of Obtaining (§13.5): e.g., acquire, gather, pick.

          • And cf. also some Cheat Verbs (§10.6): e.g., con, defraud, dispossess, rob, swindle.

        • … by transferring possession of something to another:

          • Give Verbs (§13.1): e.g., give, lend, loan, pay.

          • Contribute Verbs (§13.2): e.g., contribute, donate, relinquish, transfer.

          • Verbs of Providing (§13.4): e.g., arm, credit, furnish, issue, supply.

        • … by mutual exchange of possessions:

          • Verbs of Exchange (§13.6): e.g., swap, trade, exchange—these “relate to exchanging one thing for another” (Levin, 1993, p. 144).

      2. (b)

        Altering social status or role:

        • … by “performative” bestowal of social status:

          • Appoint Verbs (§29.1): e.g., appoint, crown, elect, ordain.

        • … by bestowing names:

          • Dub Verbs (§29.3): e.g., anoint, brand, christen, dub, term.

        • … by deciding prices:

          • Some Price Verbs (§54.4): e.g., fix, peg, price, value—these “describe an agent measuring the value of an attribute of an entity along a [relevant] scale” (Levin, 1993, p. 273), though in the relevant use that value is not measured but rather established.

        • … by altering social status in other ways:

          • Orphan Verbs (§29.7): e.g., apprentice, cuckold, martyr, orphan, widow—these are verbs whose meaning is roughly of the form “make someone an X”, where X is the noun to which the verb is zero-related.

    3. (B.iii)

      … in other special ways:

      1. (a)

        Affecting the vital state of a living organism:

        • … by some form of bodily damage:

          • Hurt Verbs (§40.8.3): e.g., bruise, fracture, hurt, sprain—these “relate to the occurrence of damage to the body through a process that is not under control of the person that suffers the damage” (Levin, 1993, p. 226).

        • … by impairing its vital functioning:

          • Poison Verbs (§42.2): e.g., electrocute, hang, poison, shoot, stab, strangle—these “relate to actions which can be ways of killing”, and further tend to lexicalize the means by which this is done (Levin, 1993, p. 232).

          • Suffocate Verbs (§40.7): e.g., choke, drown, suffocate—these “relate to the disruption of breathing” (Levin, 1993, p. 224).

        • … by restoring it to a state of well-functioning:

          • Two examples are cure, which is a Cheat Verb (§10.6), and heal, which is one among the many Other Alternating Verbs of Change of State (§45.4), as discussed under (B.i.f).

      2. (b)

        Affecting the psychological state of a sentient animal:

        • Amuse Verbs (§31.1): e.g., aggravate, amaze, bewilder, captivate, convince, dismay, entice, fascinate, gladden, humble, etc.—these “describe the bringing about of a change in psychological or emotional state” (Levin, 1993, p. 191).

      3. (c)

        Affecting the outward appearance of a person or animal:

        • Verbs of Caring for the Whole Body (§41.1): e.g., bathe, dress, groom.

        • Verbs of Caring for a Specific Body Part (§41.2), e.g., braid, brush, dye, manicure, shampoo, shave.

      4. (d)

        Affecting the state of foodstuffs:

        • … by transforming ingredients:

          • Knead Verbs (§26.5): e.g., beat (eggs), knead (dough), melt (butter), whip (cream).

        • … by cooking foods:

          • Cooking Verbs (§45.3): e.g., bake, boil, fry, grill, parboil, poach, sauté, stir-fry.

  3. (C)

    Acts of destruction and creation

    1. (C.i)

      Acts of destruction:

      1. (a)

        Ending the life of a living organism:

        • Murder Verbs (§42.1): e.g., assassinate, execute, immolate, kill, massacre, murder, slaughter, slay.

        • Suffocate and Poison Verbs (§40.7 and §42.2), as discussed under (B.iii.a), now used in a way that entails death.

      2. (b)

        Reducing a thing to its material components:

        • Destroy Verbs (§44): e.g., annihilate, demolish, destroy, extirpate, ravage, wreck—these “relate to the total destruction of entities” (Levin, 1993, p. 239).

        • Also some uses of Break Verbs (§45.1), as discussed in (B.i.b)—unlike Destroy Verbs, these also “describe specifics of the resulting physical state of an entity (e.g., whether something is broken, splintered, cracked, and so on) rather than simply describing the fact that it is totally destroyed” (Levin, 1993, p. 239).

      3. (c)

        Consuming things through a nutritive process:

        • Eat Verbs (§39.1): drink, eat—these are “simple verbs of ingesting” whose meaning “does not specify the manner of ingesting or the meal involved” (Levin, 1993, p. 214).

        • Chew Verbs (§39.2): e.g., chew, gnaw, lick, munch, nibble, sip, suck—their meaning “involves a specification of the manner of ingesting” an object (Levin, 1993, p. 214).

          • NB: As discussed in the main text, while not all uses of Chew Verb describe acts of consuming the stuff in question (e.g., ‘lick a stamp’ or ‘chew on a pen’), their meaning seems to be internally related to concepts of corresponding acts of consumption.

        • Gobble Verbs (§39.3): e.g., drink, eat, gobble, gulp, swallow, swig—they are verbs of ingestion meaning “involves the complete, and usually speedy, consumption of something” (Levin, 1993, p. 215).

        • Devour Verbs (§39.4): e.g., consume, devour, swill.

      4. (d)

        Getting rid of “things” in a very broad sense:

        • Some uses of Wipe Verbs (§10.4): e.g., buff (scratches), comb (tangles), erase (pencil marks), iron (wrinkles), rinse or wash (stains), wipe (smudges). As discussed in Section (B.i.a), all these verbs also have a state-changing use.

    2. (C.ii)

      Acts of creation:

      1. (a)

        Transforming raw materials into novel products:

        • Build Verbs (§26.1): e.g., assemble, blow, build, carve, cast, chisel, fold, knit, mold, sew, weave—these “describe the creation of a product through the transformation of raw materials” (Levin, 1993, p. 174). Verbs in this class can also be used in dative and/or double object constructions to describe a way of making something for someone, e.g. ‘build a house for X’ and ‘build X a house’.

        • Verbs of Preparing (§26.3): e.g., bake (cake), brew (coffee), light (fire), pour (drink), run (bath)—these “describe the creation of a product, usually through the transformation of raw materials … [Many] describe the preparation of food; most of the rest deal with other types of household activities” (Levin, 1993, p. 175).

        • Some Create Verbs (§26.4): e.g., concoct, fabricate, manufacture, mint, synthesize.

      2. (b)

        Creating images or patterns on surfaces:

        • Verbs of Image Impression (§25.1): e.g., embroider (insignia), engrave (name), stamp (seal), tattoo (pattern). These also have a state-affecting use that was discussed in (B.i.c).

        • Scribble Verbs (§25.2): e.g., carve (initials), draw (landscape), paint (portrait), sketch (picture), write (name).

      3. (c)

        Authorship and performance:

        • Performance Verbs (§26.7): e.g., compose (symphony), hum or whistle (tune), perform (play), play (symphony), recite (poem), sing (song), write (article)—these “describe performances, broadly speaking, and these performances are themselves the effected object” (Levin, 1993, p. 179). Arguably there is a further distinction to be drawn here according to whether the created entity has an existence independent of the creative activity itself: e.g., composing a symphony vs. reciting a poem.

  4. (D)

    Further Categories

    1. (D.i)

      Causal relations to processes and events:

      • Begin Verbs (§55.1): e.g., begin, continue, end, halt, repeat, resume—these “describe the initiation, termination, or continuation of an activity” (Levin, 1993, p. 179).

      • Complete Verbs (§55.2): complete, discontinue, initiate, quit—these are like Begin Verbs except in that they lack an intransitive use (e.g., The meeting ended/?completed).

    2. (D.ii)

      Causal acts involving activity on the part of the affected entity:

      1. (a)

        Getting a person or animal to eat:

        • Verbs of Feeding (§39.7): bottlefeed, breastfeed, feed, forcefeed, handfeed, spoonfeed—these “describe causing someone to eat” (Levin, 1993, p. 217).

      2. (b)

        Getting a person or animal to move:

        • Run Verbs and Waltz Verbs (§51.3.2 and §51.5): e.g., run, walk, waltz—as discussed in (A.i.b); used transitively and with an animate entity as direct object.

        • Some Accompany Verbs (§51.7): e.g., escort, guide, lead, shepherd—and perhaps also chase, which is classified a Chase Verb (§51.6).

        • Verbs of Rushing (§53.2): hasten, hurry, rush—used transitively and with an animate entity as direct object.

    3. (D.iii)

      Causing growth or vital development:

      • This category does not map neatly onto any Levin class. Two paradigms of it are in the transitive uses of grow and hatch, which Levin classifies as Build Verbs (§26.1); however, as discussed under (C.ii.a), the verbs in this class paradigmatically “describe the creation of a product through the transformation of raw materials” (Levin, 1993, p. 174). What distinguishes grow and hatch from most Build Verbs is that they also have intransitive uses that place them in the Levin class of Grow Verbs (§26.2), whose other members are develop, evolve, and mature. But while Levin says that these latter verbs “simply describe the transformation of an entity from one form to another” (1993, p. 174), this characterization ignores the way that the change in question is by way of the transforming entity’s vital activity. This last dimension also belongs to causative acts like growing tomatoes and hatching chicks, etc. There is a transitive use of raise (e.g., ‘raise children’) that has this sense as well.

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Schwenkler, J. The categories of causation. Synthese 203, 9 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04409-7

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