No sooner had I shared with you the delightful discovery of the double causative than the next lesson had another shock waiting (drum roll): the TRIPLE causative.
It works like this.
Things simply happen
In the traditional Turkic view of the world, things occur of their own accord. Look at the simplest verbs:
- news arrives (gel-),
- the horse stops (dur-),
- dinner cooks (piş-).
All by itself. Like something in a fairy tale.
Somebody turns out to be doing it
When into this self-propelling universe there bursts a person who is, as it happens, the one propelling it, we get the first causative:
- news is brought (getir-),
- the horse is stopped (durdur-),
- dinner is cooked (pişir-).
And somebody must supervise
Given that there are now people doing things, one obviously cannot leave them to it. There must be leadership.
So you direct others in the proper way to
- bring (getirt-),
- stop (durdurt-) and, naturally,
- cook (pişirt-),
because heaven knows these hopeless creatures will never work it out unaided. Behold: the causative of the causative.
New this season
And since the culture is hierarchical, there is somebody above you as well, running the process at a higher level and instructing those who instruct those who do the work.
He arranges for the word to be given that the thing be:
- delivered (getirttir-),
- halted (durdurttur-),
- prepared (pişirttir-).
There it is: the triple causative.
Worked example
Yemek pişiyor. Dinner is cooking.
Yemek pişiriyor. She is cooking dinner—that is, bringing it about that dinner cooks. Causative.
Eşine yemek pişirtiyor. He is getting his wife to cook dinner—bringing it about that his wife brings it about that dinner cooks. Double causative.
Eşine restorana yemek pişirttiriyor. He is getting his wife to have the restaurant do the cooking—bringing it about that his wife brings it about that the kitchen brings it about that dinner cooks. Triple causative.
Consider what English has to do to keep up with that last one: get, to have, do—three separate helper verbs, a subordinate clause and a following wind. Turkish stacks three syllables inside one word and goes home.
Do not ask whether the delegation can be cascaded any further. Purely theoretically, it may well be permissible. But we have not covered that yet.
