Causative Verbs and Economy Metaphors

This paper claims that the causative verbs such as make, have and get acquire their causation meanings through the metaphor CAUSATION IS AN ECONOMIC DEAL. This claim can be evidenced by the fact that the basic meanings of the verbs all concern economic deals such as production, possession, and purchase. Furthermore, this paper argues that we can identify further detailed metaphorical entailments of the metaphor which are manifested by the different conceptualizations for the semantic extension of each causative verb. The metaphorical entailments are based on non-constituent correspondences between forcing and producing, between requesting and possessing, and between persuading and buying. We further claim that these different correspondences can address different statistical patterns previously observed with respect to the three causative verbs.