The Semantic Representation of Causation and Agentivity Thomason

The Semantic Representation of Causation and Agentivity
The Semantic Representation of Causation and Agen

tivity
Richmond H. Thomason
The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure
Edited by Robert Truswell
Print Publication Date: Mar 2019 Subject: Linguistics, Semantics

Online Publication Date: May 2019 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199685318.013.14
Abstract and Keywords
In accounting for causativity and related constructions, it was popular at first to avoid ap
pealing to events and event structure. But internal problems with this conservative ap
proach motivate the introduction of eventualities into the semantic apparatus. Terence
Parsons gets the credit for seeing this. His ideas can serve as the basis of a theory that
begins to do justice to how causal notions are incorporated in natural language morpholo
gy. But work remains to be done in refining Parsons’ logical primitives, in relating the se
mantic picture to work in the metaphysics of causation, and in developing the causal pic
ture in relation to other ideas about eventualities, such as the work discussed in this vol
ume.
Keywords: causality, agency, formal semantics, telicity, nonmonotonic logic
5.1 The domain of causality and agentivity

WE are built to wonder why things happen. Asking why something occurred and pinning
the blame on someone or something come naturally to us. We’re also built to think about
how to make things happen. This sort of reasoning seems to involve the same sort of
causal knowledge, but uses it in a different direction: here we ask what we can do in or
der to achieve a result, rather than how an observed result could have been brought
about by an action.
Since agents and the ways they make things happen are so important to us, it’s no sur
prise to find ways of talking about them deeply embedded in human language. Human
languages make available many ways of talking about causality, but often we find causali
ty embedded in basic and pervasive morphological processes. Causativization, which in
English relates an English adjective like flat, denoting a state, to the verb flatten, is a par
adigmatic construction of this sort—and it will be my main focus of attention here. Many
other processes, such as the suffix -ify (as in terrify), the prefix en- (as in enlarge), the suf
fix -able (as in breakable), and the suffix -er (as in oxidizer) have a strong causal flavour.
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The hope is that understanding causativization will shed light on these related construc
tions.
Of course, languages also offer ways of talking about causation that are more ex
(p. 124)
plicit, such as English cause and make (The spark caused the fire, The yeast made the
dough rise). These are less important for linguistic semantics, for several reasons. (1)
They are single words, and even profound words are less important for semantics than
linguistic constructions. (2) Explaining these words is more a task for philosophers than
for linguists. (3) Good philosophical explanations of these words might be useful for for
mal semantics—but then again, they might not, any more than a good scientific explana
tion of ‘space’ would be useful.
Emmon Bach had a good point in Bach (1989), where he says that the interpretation of
word formation is more challenging in some ways than that of syntactic processes. It of
ten has a more philosophical flavour, and is closely related to traditional—and difficult—
philosophical issues. Bach coined the term ‘natural language metaphysics’ for this phe
nomenon. Causative constructions and agentivity are good illustrations of Bach’s point.
Therefore this chapter must try to deal not only with the causative construction and
agency as linguistic phenomena, but with the philosophical background.
Causation is studied by many disciplines in many different ways. Work on the topic in for
mal semantics was shaped by an earlier tradition in analytic philosophy and modal logic.
According to this tradition, propositions—which could also be thought of as the states
that a system exhibits at various times—are the terms of the causal relation. A proposi
tion, or the state of a system at a certain time, causes another proposition: the state at
another time.
I’ll argue that the modal approach to causality fails to account well for the sort of causali
ty that is at stake in natural language. The search for a better account is, I believe, close
ly connected to events and agency.
In sketching what I hope will be a better approach, I will be as noncommittal as possible,

introducing only the elements that are needed to provide a semantics for causal construc
tions. Surprisingly little is needed, in fact: agency, animacy, and a skeletal causal struc
ture over events. I see no reason why these simple ingredients should not be compatible
with more detailed theories of events and eventualities, and in particular with the alge
braic approach developed in Link (1997) and many other works. Causality is not the focus
of these theories, which concentrate on systematic relationships between events and
their participants. It would be interesting if there were interactions between the causal
structures I introduce and the algebra of events, but at the level of detail I have explored
so far, I have yet to discover any of these.
Page 2 of 16

5.2 The causative construction

The causative construction is ubiquitous in human language, and is realized in many
ways: see Comrie (1985), Song (1996). But I know of no convincing evidence that there
are significant differences across languages in the underlying semantics. As a working
(p. 125) hypothesis, I’ll assume there are no such differences, and will rely here on evi
dence from English. The central issue, then, is to find a semantic interpretation of the re
lation between, for instance, the adjective full, as in The bucket is full, and the verb fill, as
in She filled the bucket.
5.2.1 Dowty’s theory
Dowty(1979), which is based on earlier work of David Dowty’s, dating at least to 1972, is
the first systematic study of causative constructions in the formal tradition. Dowty uses
Montague’s model-theoretic framework, with one difference: sentences are evaluated at
pairs of worlds and time intervals, rather than at pairs of worlds and (instantaneous)
times. He feels that this enables a better account of progressives.
Dowty’s approach is logically conservative, in that, with this one exception, it uses only
logical materials from Montague (1973), and one can easily imagine Montague approving
of this single modification.
I will try to explain why this conservative approach fails to account for causatives. This
failure motivates a more radical departure from Montague’s framework, in which events
and other eventualities are introduced into semantic models as primitives, and terms
from natural language metaphysics can appear in meaning postulates.
5.2.1.1 Propositional CAUSE

Dowty uses two propositional operators to interpret causatives, BECOME (1-place) and
CAUSE (2-place). An (n-place) propositional operator takes n propositions into a truth val
ue, where a proposition is the intension of a sentence. The most familiar 1-place proposi
tional operators are modal operators, like necessity and possibility. Logicians such as
David Lewis treat the conditional as a 2-place propositional operator.
From Montague (1973), Dowty inherits the idea that the semantic values of expressions
are relativized to a time and a world. In interval semantics, this means that these values
are relativized to an interval and a world. A propositional expression, associated with the
type 〈s, t〉, corresponds to a function from worlds and intervals to truth values.
Dowty supplies CAUSE and BECOME with a customized model-theoretic semantics.

Where p has the propositional type 〈s, t〉, BECOME(p) is true at world w and interval I if p
is uniformly false at some initial part of w and uniformly true at some final part of I.
To interpret CAUSE, Dowty relies on Lewis (1977) for an analysis of causality in terms of
conditionals. Lewis’ idea starts with the thought that p causes q if and only if the condi
Page 3 of 16

tional ¬p □→ ¬q is true, and proceeds to qualify this in order to deal with examples that
are problematic for the initial idea; Dowty suggests modifications of his own.
The literature on counterfactual analyses of causation is extensive; for discussion and ref
erences, see Menzies (2009). These matters are peripheral for what I want to say here,
(p. 126) and I will not discuss them further.1 What is important for our purposes is that
Dowty takes the fundamental causal notion in his account of causatives to be proposition
al: p causes q. Dowty has reasons for this decision, but, as we will see, it is problematic in
ways he may not have foreseen.
Many languages—and even English, where the structures are less regular and explicit—
provide evidence for causative structures involving becoming (or inchoative) and some
form of causality. This suggests that a causative verb phrase like open it would have a
structure like this:2
(1)
CAUSE1 and Dowty’s propositional CAUSE don’t align. The complex [BECOME[open]]Vi
has the semantic type 〈e, t〉 of a predicate; the complex [CAUSE1[BECOME[open]]]Vt has
the type 〈e, 〈e, t〉〉 of a 2-place relation. So (assuming that it operates on the intension of its
argument) CAUSE1 must have type 〈〈s, 〈e, t〉〉, 〈e, 〈e, t〉〉〉. In other words, CAUSE1 must tran
sitivize an intransitive verb.
But Dowty’s propositional CAUSE takes two propositions into a value of type t, and so will
have type 〈τp, 〈τp, t〉〉, where τp is the type 〈s, t〉 of a proposition. Less formally, Dowty’s
causal primitive takes propositions as arguments (‘That p causes that q’), and proposi
tions (sets of worlds) don’t allow an agent to be recovered. I will argue that Dowty’s solu
tion to this mismatch is profoundly inadequate, and that the problem of the missing agent
is deeper and more difficult than has been supposed.3
Dowty invokes a trick from Montague’s toolbox, using lambda abstraction to define
CAUSE1 in terms of CAUSE:
Page 4 of 16

(2)
The ups and downs (^ and ˇ) in (2) are intensional bookkeeping. We need the ex
(p. 127)
tension of Q, for instance, to apply it to x of type e; this produces the truth value ˇQ(x).
Then we must create the intension of this truth value, ^[ˇQ(x)], to obtain a proposition
that can serve as an argument for CAUSE.5
When CAUSE1 in (1) is replaced by its definition in (2), we arrive at the following formal
ization of the whole VP, after using lambda conversion to simplify the result.
(3)
In other words, supposing that the ‘it’ in (1) is a certain door, there is some property such
that the agent’s having it causes the door to become open. This is Dowty’s idea: to open a
door is to have some property or other such that having it causes the door’s opening.
5.2.1.2 A fatal flaw

This idea has the disastrous consequence that if anyone closes a door, everyone closes the
door. Suppose that John opens a certain door. This is formalized, according to Dowty’s
idea, by (4).6
(4)
Now, where MARY denotes any person,
(5)
is logically equivalent to ˇQ(JOHN). So, using lambda abstraction, ˇQ(JOHN) will be logi
cally equivalent to
(6)
Finally, then, (4) is logically equivalent to
(7)
Page 5 of 16

Something has gone very wrong here. The underlying problem is that there are too many
predicates, including concocted ones like the one used in the above proof, for (4) to have
the meaning that Dowty wishes it to have, in which the predicate is the performance of an
action of John’s.
(p. 128) 5.3 Do, agency, and eventualities

Sections 2.3.8 and 2.3.9 of Dowty (1979) deal with motivating and deploying a DO
operator; these sections are tentative and don’t recommend any definite proposal.
Dowty’s DO is a relation between an individual (the agent) and a proposition (what is ac
complished), and so has type 〈τp, 〈e,t〉〉.
Dowty is not alone in entertaining the idea that agency is propositional: philosophical lo
gicians have investigated a similar account of agency (‘agent sees to it that p’, or stit). In
fact, this approach, inspired in part by decision-theoretic ideas, is the best developed
body of work on agency in the philosophical logic tradition.7
This propositional DO operator can help to improve Dowty’s definition (2).
(8)
This definition avoids the difficulty described above in Section 5.2.1.2. But the proposi
tional approach to agency on which it is based is inadequate for linguistic purposes, for
the simple reason that agency figures in event types that are not stative or propositional.
Mary is the agent when she waves her arms, or when she runs in circles, but there is no
sensible way to treat these examples as relations between Mary and a proposition.
I believe this flaw is decisive. Despite the difficulty of providing an entirely unified theory
of thematic relations, including agency,8 unification is desirable to the extent that it can
be achieved. If the semantic type of agency is nonpropositional in some cases, we should
consider the hypothesis that it is nonpropositional in all cases. Furthermore, a more de
tailed examination of the sort of causality involved in causatives reveals more specific
problems with propositional agency; see Section 5.4.3, below.
5.4 Adding eventualities to models

When in Davidson (1967) Donald Davidson introduced a variable standing for events into
formalizations of sentences involving verbs like stab it seemed, and no doubt was intend
ed, to be an alternative to semantic theories, like Carnap’s and Montague’s, that depend
ed heavily on intensionality. Because Davidson concentrated on adverbs in his 1967 pa
per, and Montague’s theory of adverbs was quite different, this looked like a competition
between two very different approaches.
Page 6 of 16

However, Davidson’s events are individuals, and as such enjoy a place in

(p. 129)
Montague’s systems of types. The Montaguification of Davidson’s proposal requires no

change in the syntactic types of verbs: we can accomplish it with meaning postulates, if
we’re willing to use a dynamic version of Intensional Logic. A simple noncausative such
as sit will enter into syntactic structures [[sit]Vi]VP. As well as the type 〈e, t〉 direct transla
tion SIT of sit, we introduce a constant SIT1 of type 〈e, 〈e, t〉〉, and relate these two SITs
with the following meaning postulate.
(9)
The dynamic apparatus will make the value of the variable e available as an argument for
verbal adjuncts such as adverbs, with meaning postulates serving to recover Davidson’s
formalizations.
A causative VP like open it will enter into the same syntactic structures as any other tran
sitive VP, and the semantic type of open will be 〈e, 〈e, t〉〉.
This approach precipitates a new problem, the opposite of the one that (1) presented. We
need a meaning postulate to explain the relation of transitive open to the homophonous
adjective. Terence Parsons’ proposal for such a postulate, and my own refinement, both
appeal to the structure of telic eventualities.
5.4.1 Terence Parsons’ Neodavidsonian theory
Parsons (1990) provided an early indication that Montague’s framework and Davidson’s
proposal were compatible. Like Davidson, Parsons adds an extra argument place to verbs
for eventualities. He uses this not only to formalize adverbial constructions, but to ac
count for progressive and perfective aspect and for causatives. Although Parsons is con
cerned mainly with what he calls ‘subatomic semantics’—in effect, with the semantics of
verb morphology and verb modifiers—and although for the most part he confines himself
to formalizations in First Order Logic, he clearly is attempting not to replace Montague’s
framework with a rival, but to supplement it with the apparatus he feels is needed to for
malize subatomic constructions. This apparatus could be incorporated in a dynamic Mon
tague-style fragment by converting it into meaning postulates.
Treating eventualities as first-order individuals, Parsons classifies them as either states or

events, developing a theory that involves thematic relations, culmination, and holding.
Linguists will be familiar with thematic relations such as AGENT and THEME. ‘Culmina
tion’ is formalized as a relation between an event and a time. The idea of this relation
goes back to Aristotle (especially Metaphysics θ). Certain eventualities (those that are tel
ic), while they are occurring (or ‘holding’) are aiming at a completion or an end, which
they may or may not achieve. CUL(e, t) is true of event e and time t if e culminates at t. As
in Davidson (1967), events are typed by the verbs that denote them: (p. 130) STABBING(e),
Page 7 of 16

for instance, classifies the eventuality denoted by e as a stabbing event. Finally, causation
is now regarded as a relation CAUSE between events.
Although, of course, we do sometimes speak of causation as a relation between proposi

tions, as in The Earth’s warming caused the polar ice cap to melt, it is certainly more
common and natural to speak of it as a relation between events, as in His death was
caused by a heart attack. More important than this small advantage, though, from the
standpoint of the theory, is the ability to introduce culmination and thematic roles into
models.
Culmination yields an account of progressive and perfective without having to resort to

intervals. For instance, Parsons would formalize It was opening as
(10)
and It opened as
(11)
The times in (11) are instantaneous, because events remove the need for intervals.
Dowty’s intervals, in fact, can be seen as anaemic eventualities. An eventuality will deter
mine a stretch of times (the times at which it holds), but it will contain much more infor
mation. It would make no sense, for instance, to talk about the agent of a time interval, al
though of course it’s appropriate to talk about the agent of an event.
Parsons treats terms like CUL and CAUSE, which are central to the account, as un
analysed. This is quite different from Dowty’s approach, where intervals are sets of times
and concepts are characterized in terms of more fundamental features of models, and dif
ferent from Montague in introducing concepts from natural language metaphysics into
meaning postulates.
This more freewheeling approach leaves many central concepts undefined. There is a
temptation to add new primitive terms whenever there is something new to be explained,
and to omit axioms for these terms when none come easily to mind, leading to a more
loosely organized theory. But sacrificing the unity that comes from a small set of primitive
concepts allows a theory to be developed incrementally, by adding axioms. Parsons’ primi
tive CAUSE, for instance, could be fleshed out by adding axioms that incorporate Lewis’
conditional theory, or any other formal theory of causality.
On the whole, the advantages of an axiomatic approach seem to outweigh the disadvan
tages. It is often more productive to develop theories of fundamental notions than to look
for definitions.
Page 8 of 16

When Mary opens a door, Mary will be the agent of an opening event. But there will also
be a process of opening that the door undergoes. This process is directed at a terminal
state in which the door is open. So, according to Parsons, the whole happening involves
three things: (1) an action of opening, performed by Mary, (2) a process of opening, un
dergone by the door, (3) a state of being open, which the process ‘aims at’ and (since we
are imagining a successful opening) achieves. At this point, Parsons introduces another
theoretical term: a relation of becoming between the process the door undergoes and the
state that the process achieves. Where e denotes an event and (p. 131) s a state, BECOME(e,
s) means that s is the outcome that e aims at. This idea could help to relate opening a
door to the proposition that the door is open, if states can be related to true propositions.
This theory resembles Dowty’s in saying that Mary opened the door amounts to Mary per
formed an action that caused the door to become open. The formalization of Mary opened
it is this in Parsons’ event-based framework (omitting, as he sometimes does, the culmina
tion times).
(12)
The idea can be pictured as follows.
(13)
Page 9 of 16

A causative, then, corresponds to a complex consisting of three eventualities: (1) Mary’s

action e1 on the door (for instance, this might be turning a lever and pulling), (2) the
process e2 undergone by the door as it opens, and (3) the state s of being open that culmi
nates this process.
On the whole, this event-based approach looks better than Dowty’s attempt to account for
causatives within a more conservative framework. It leaves some important notions, such
as becoming, unexplained, but produces a solid basis for further development.
5.4.2 Moens’ and Steedman’s composite structures
In Moens (1987), Marc Moens developed an improvement on this idea, elaborated in later
work by Moens and Mark Steedman.9
They introduce structured eventual complexes: eventualities with eventualities as

(p. 132)
parts. In particular, a nucleus consists of: (1) a preparatory eventuality, called a prepara
tory process, (2) a punctual culmination, and (3) a consequent state. These parts may
themselves have parts. From this standpoint, Parsons’ structure is a single, composite
event in which the preparation has two parts: an initiating action performed by Mary and
a process of opening undergone by the door.
Parsons’ picture of Mary opening the door, as diagrammed in (13), looks like this from the
Moens–Steedman perspective:
(14)
Page 10 of 16

I will call this entire structure a complete telic eventuality. The substructure that gets the
entire eventuality in motion (Mary’s unlatching and pulling, in the example) I call the in
ception. The process that is initiated by the inception and has the culminating state as its
end I call the body.
Telic eventualities can be incomplete. Those that lack a culminating state are failures of
the sort that give rise to the ‘imperfective paradox’. It is harder to think of telic eventuali
ties that lack an inception, but perhaps the changing of a leaf to yellow would be an ex
ample: the first small change of colour is not importantly different from the later changes
that make up the body.
Telic eventualities are subject to constraints. We will want to say that the inception is a
cause, and typically is the chief cause, of the body. And we will want to say that the body
and the culminating state stand in something like Parsons’ BECOME relation.
These matters are important, but I will not say much more about them here. Even if
causality is a relation between events, a propositional theory like Lewis’ is available, by
equating ‘e1 causes e2’ with ‘that e1 happens causes that e2 happens’ (see Swain 1978).
Page 11 of 16

But I believe that a theory based on causal mechanisms, like that of Woodward
(p. 133)
(2003), looks more promising. Providing a theory of the BECOME relation is, as far as I
know, an open problem. One would like to say that the body somehow approaches the cul
minating state as a limit, but some telic eventualities (such as filling a bottle with beans)
are best thought of as discrete, and the mathematical theory of limits is not very useful
here.
5.4.3 Using agentivity to characterize causatives
In diagram (14) there are no explicit causal relations, but if they were added they would
relate events to events, rather than agents to states. When Mary opens the door, she may
indeed cause the final state in which it is open, but her opening the door doesn’t consist
in this causal connection. Rather, it consists in her being the agent of an action that plays
an originating role, setting in motion a complex change culminating in an open door.
This suggests that in seeking an agent for a telic eventuality e, we shouldn’t look, as Dow
ty does, for a cause, but for the agent of e’s inception.
There is a danger here of regress, because the inception can itself be causally complex.
This can happen, for instance, if Mary causes a door to open by throwing a switch, or by
setting a timer that throws a switch. But this danger will be avoided as long as the series
of inceptions terminates in a simple action, such as pushing a switch, that is not telic.
Such a termination condition seems plausible, from a metaphysical standpoint.
In Thomason (2014), I examine a range of cases, and conclude that the agent of the in
ception depends not only on the causal relations of the subevents, but on whether their
agents are animate.10 This analysis, of course, requires models that incorporate not only
the causal relations between events, but the feature of animacy. But with these materials,
it seems that we can carry through the idea that the causality involved in causatives is ac
tually a special form of agency.
This also yields a solution to the problem of ‘immediate’ or ‘manipulative’ causality in

causatives. It is not really a matter of immediacy, because the agent of an inception can
bring about the end result through an arbitrarily long causal chain, as long as other
agents involved in this chain are inanimate. But it is immediate or manipulative if we
think of these long inanimate chains as more or less invisible mechanisms for transmit
ting the action of the original agent.11
Looking at telic eventualities as complex causal systems, this account of causativi

(p. 134)
ty in terms of agency requires only that they consist of eventualities standing in a net
work of causal relations, that in this network an inception can be identified, that some of
the component eventualities have agents, and that these agents can be classified as ani
mate or inanimate. In particular, although this account treats causality in causatives as a
special case of agency, it doesn’t do away with the need to represent causal relations in
models. These relations are needed to characterize the original agent of the inception.
Page 12 of 16

5.4.4 Resultatives and normalcy
Resultative constructions, such as hammer the metal flat, are often grouped together with
causatives, and I believe that the analysis I suggested in Section 5.4.3 will transfer to
them. But the fact that resultatives seem to incorporate manner creates an additional
complication.
All analyses of resultatives that I know of treat them similarly to causatives, with an in
strumental modifier. Mary hammered the metal flat, for instance, would mean that Mary
caused (perhaps immediately or manipulatively) the metal to become flat by hammering
(or by hammering it).
The difficulty is that resultatives seem to require a sort of causality that is manner-appro
priate. If, for instance, Mary hammers on a switch to start a metal press, which then flat
tens the metal, she caused the metal to become flat by hammering, but she didn’t ham
mer it flat. Even if she hammers on the metal, and the vibrations somehow jar the metal
press into operation, she still hasn’t hammered it flat, even though she flattened it by
hammering on it. This feature of resultatives, which is quite general, shows that they in
volve a semantic component over and above the ingredients that we find in ordinary
causatives.
I believe that what is missing is the incorporation of normalcy: hammer flat requires, for
instance, that the causal process involving the hammer brings about the result in a way
that is normal for the use of hammers. This sort of normalcy can be formalized using
techniques from the version of nonmonotonic logic known as circumscription.12
Circumscriptive theories deploy a family of abnormality predicates: Birds fly, for instance,
would be formalized as follows, using a special abnormality predicate ABfly for flying:
(15)
To formalize hammer flat, we would create an abnormality predicate ABhammer

(p. 135)
applicable to events. ABhammer(e) would mean that if e involves the use of a hammer (or, if
we wish, if the instrument of e is a hammer) then the hammer is used in e in a way that is
somehow abnormal with respect to hammer usage.
This formalization may seem contrived, but has been successfully used in formalizing
commonsense reasoning. I have found that normalcy requirements are widespread in the
semantics of morphological processes. For instance, screwdriver denotes things that nor
mally are used to drive screws, wastepaper basket denotes baskets that normally are used
to hold wastepaper, and flushable toilet denotes toilets that will flush if one tries in the
normal way to flush them.
Page 13 of 16

5.5 Agentivity
Agentivity is closely related to causality; many philosophers would say it is the specific
form of causality involved in performing an action. And in fact, I found it impossible to ac
count for the semantics of causative constructions without bringing agency into the pic
ture.
Many authors have pointed out that the linguistic phenomena of agency leave us with a
very vague picture of what agency is, and that it is difficult to find natural language con
structions that reliably link to agency. I find the evidence cited by the Generative Seman
ticists (e.g., Ross 1972) to account for agency in terms of features of the agent less than
fully convincing. But the idea that agency is a relation between certain events and indi
viduals, which goes back to Higginbotham (1985), is widespread and useful; we have seen
one use of it in Section 5.4.3, above, where it was an ingredient in an account of
causatives. Much can be learned, too, about the interactions between this formalization of
agency and the syntax of argument structure,13 and the literature provides many other
useful insights based on this idea. Despite this progress, a purely semantic characteriza
tion of what agency amounts to seems to be elusive.
Independently of any linguistic concerns, much has been said about agency in other disci
plines. Wilson and Shpall (2012) is a good guide to the philosophical literature; Belnap et
al. (2001) provides a logical study of agency, and Wooldridge (2000) presents a theory of
artificial rational agency.
As Dowty shows in Dowty (1991), although it is difficult or impossible to gather a defining

set of characteristics of agency from the linguistic evidence, it is possible to delineate a
cluster of features that normally accompany the concept of agency. It seems, then, that
agency not only is basic, but is difficult to analyse. This is not a problem as long as
agency is treated as a primitive ingredient of models, and in fact this is the way it is usu
ally treated in theories inspired by Davidson’s ideas.
(p. 136) 5.6 Conclusion

In accounting for causativity and related constructions, it was popular at first to avoid ap
pealing to events and event structure. But internal problems with this conservative ap
proach motivate the introduction of eventualities into the semantic apparatus. Terence
Parsons gets the credit for seeing this. His ideas can serve as the basis of a theory that
begins to do justice to how causal notions are incorporated in natural language morpholo
gy. But work remains to be done in refining Parsons’ logical primitives, in relating the se
mantic picture to work in the metaphysics of causation, and in developing the causal pic
ture in relation to other ideas about eventualities, such as the work discussed in this vol
ume.
Page 14 of 16

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Regine Eckardt for thoughtful and useful comments.
Notes:
(1) For a critical discussion of the linguistic usefulness of Lewis’ theory, and more general
ly of propositional causality, see Eckardt (2000).
(2) Recall that CAUSE is Dowty’s propositional causal operator. CAUSE1 is a placeholder
for a causal operator that would be appropriate in the causative construction (1).
(3) The following discussion repeats and elaborates a point made in Thomason (2014).
(4) To simplify things, beginning with (2) I will omit BECOME from the formalization.
(5) To further simplify things, I’ve used an individual variable y to formalize it, and have
assumed that adjectives have the reduced type 〈e, t〉.
(6) Here, JOHN and DOOR1 are constants of type e. The former denotes John and the lat
ter the door in question.
(7) See Belnap et al. (2001). For Belnap and his colleagues, stit is a causal relation be
tween an agent and a state of affairs or proposition that the agent brings about by acting
at a certain time.
(8) See Dowty (1989).
(9) See See Steedman (1998), Moens and Steedman (1988). For an extended treatment
based on similar ideas, see Klein (1994).
(10) See the discussion in Truswell’s chapter of intentional events for more about this dis
tinction. The concept of animacy, of course, is closely related to intentionality, but, if inad
vertent actions aren’t intentional, it may include actions that are not strictly intentional.
Also, in complex cooperative activities, the contributions of some human agents can be
‘mechanized’ and treated as inanimate, even though they are fully intentional. When we
speak of Napoleon invading Russia, for instance, we are mechanizing the actions of his
subordinates. This phenomenon is also discussed in Truswell’s chapter.
(11) This provides another reason for dispensing with propositional DO. The sort of causal
ity at stake in causativity seems to require a species of agency—the agency at stake in in
ceptions—that is not propositional.
(12) See, for instance, Lifschitz (1988). Nonmonotonic logic was developed in part to en
able the formalization of commonsense reasoning. Work in this area by logically minded
computer scientists like Lifschitz overlaps to a large extent with work in natural language
metaphysics.
Page 15 of 16

(13) See, for instance, Kratzer (1996).
Richmond H. Thomason
Richmond H. Thomason has taught at Yale University, the University of Pittsburgh,

and is currently a Professor of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Computer Science at the
University of Michigan. He has written two logic textbooks, and edited several books
in areas related to logic and linguistics.
Page 16 of 16

The Semantic Representation of Causation and Agentivity Thomason

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The Semantic Representation of Causation and Agentivity Thomason

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The Semantic Representation of Causation and Agentivity

The Semantic Representation of Causation and Agen­

Print Publication Date: Mar 2019 Subject: Linguistics, Semantics

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: causality, agency, formal semantics, telicity, nonmonotonic logic

5.1 The domain of causality and agentivity

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In sketching what I hope will be a better approach, I will be as noncommittal as possible,

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5.2 The causative construction

5.2.1 Dowty’s theory

5.2.1.1 Propositional CAUSE

Dowty supplies CAUSE and BECOME with a customized model-theoretic semantics.

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5.2.1.2 A fatal flaw

Now, where MARY denotes any person,

Finally, then, (4) is logically equivalent to

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(p. 128) 5.3 Do, agency, and eventualities

This propositional DO operator can help to improve Dowty’s definition (2).

5.4 Adding eventualities to models

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However, Davidson’s events are individuals, and as such enjoy a place in

Montague’s systems of types. The Montaguification of Davidson’s proposal requires no

5.4.1 Terence Parsons’ Neodavidsonian theory

Treating eventualities as first-order individuals, Parsons classifies them as either states or

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Although, of course, we do sometimes speak of causation as a relation between proposi­

Culmination yields an account of progressive and perfective without having to resort to

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The idea can be pictured as follows.

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A causative, then, corresponds to a complex consisting of three eventualities: (1) Mary’s

5.4.2 Moens’ and Steedman’s composite structures

They introduce structured eventual complexes: eventualities with eventualities as

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5.4.3 Using agentivity to characterize causatives

This also yields a solution to the problem of ‘immediate’ or ‘manipulative’ causality in

Looking at telic eventualities as complex causal systems, this account of causativi­

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5.4.4 Resultatives and normalcy

To formalize hammer flat, we would create an abnormality predicate ABhammer

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As Dowty shows in Dowty (1991), although it is difficult or impossible to gather a defining

(p. 136) 5.6 Conclusion

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(8) See Dowty (1989).

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(13) See, for instance, Kratzer (1996).

Richmond H. Thomason has taught at Yale University, the University of Pittsburgh,

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The Semantic Representation of Causation and Agen

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