The causative construction in Middle Egyptian

Languages usually have a means of depicting situations where an external agent provides the
compulsion, enabling or license for somebody else to act. In English, for example, alongside
one of our standard example situations in 1a, we can have an additional external causing
agent involved as in 1b onwards:

1a John kicked the ball

1b Mary made John kick the ball
1c Mary had John kick the ball
1d Mary got John to kick the ball
1e Mary allowed John to kick the ball
1f Mary let John kick the ball

For each of these situations to be true, John must kick the ball, and from 1b onwards Mary
has a role in enabling this from firm causation of compulsion through to mild causation of
licensing.

The typical way this is constructed is for a common verb (e.g. ‘make’ as in ‘I made a cake’,
with its standard creation sense, or ‘get’ as in ‘I got a present for Christmas’, with its standard
reception sense), to be used as a verb of causation, which could be glossed as ‘cause’. This
verb (V1) appears in whatever tense form is needed for the situation (the past tense in
examples 1b onwards above) and takes it own subject, the enabler or causer (S1). So, for
example:

Mary got John to kick the ball

S1 V1

The caused event is then presented. The grammar of this varies considerably from language
to language and often involves complexity around the merging of the causing sub-event and
the caused sub-event into one clause. For example, in English, the verb expressing the caused
event (V2) goes in either the bare infinitive (as in ‘Mary made John kick the ball’) or the
‘to+infinitive’ construction (‘Mary got John to kick the ball’). Also, ‘John’ is marked as the
direct object (O) of the verb ‘got’, as we can see from the pronoun use in ‘Mary got him to
kick the ball’, ‘Mary made him kick the ball’ but also provides the subject (S2) of the caused
event. We might represent this as follows:

past to+infinitive
Mary got John to kick the ball
S1 V1 O1
S2 to-V2 O2

1
Fortunately, in Middle Egyptian the grammar of this construction is a little easier than it is in
English. First, there is only one verb of causing (V1) in common usage, the verb rdi. The
ordinary meaning of this verb is ‘to give’, ‘to put’ or ‘to place’. However, it is pressed into
service as a verb of causation. In translation, you can use any of the English verbs listed
above, depending on best English sense.

In its causative use, rdi provides V1, the causing verb and, like its English equivalent, can
appear in whatever tense form is needed. It also has its own subject S1, which appears in the
standard subject position for the relevant construction.

Here’s a real Egyptian example from The Eloquent Peasant. At the end of the peasant’s third
petition, Rensi gets angered by the peasant’s criticism of Rensi’s actions. So, Rensi does the
following (Peas. B1 217):

past sDm.n=f
aHa.n rdi.n =f aHa imy-sA 2 r=f Xr smiw
aux V1 S1
Then he got his 2 bodyguards to attend to him with whips

In this case rdi appears in the past sDm.n=f form, expressing past causation.

In Middle Egyptian, the verb expressing the caused event (V2) is almost always in the future
sDm=f form. It has its own subject (S2), which follows the verb, and any other relevant
participants:

past sDm.n=f future sDm=f

aHa.n rdi.n =f aHa imy-sA 2 r=f Xr smiw
aux V1 S1 V2 S2 PP PP
Then he got his 2 bodyguards to attend to him with whips