Concatenated Causatives of Causatives


Some recent posts here reminded me about something from many, many years ago:
how do you form concatenated causatives in Japanese?

If I want to say, "Make me go", I would say, 行かせて. That seems pretty clear. Or
maybe even 行かせ since this is a pretty blunt thing to say (ie, you wouldn't
want to say something like this to your parents or boss without potentially
creating a lot of problems). But between friends or peers, it can be a joke or
a kind of stubborn refusal to cooperate with someone.

But how would you say, "Make me make you go"? But, I'm not sure 行かせさせて renders
this correctly.

How do you make clear who's making who go? English nests things in a way that
you can follow who's making whom make whom do whatever. But, I'm simultaneous
the one making "you" do something for which you are then making "me" do
something. So, at that point, I get lost. A crude attempt might be

> 私が、あなたに、私に行かせさせて

Yet that sounds about as clear as mud! Convoluted and just not very natural
sounding in Japanese IMHO.

Decades ago, this matter originally came up as a strange/difficult thing to
translate into Japanese when I was new to Japanese and was basically trying to
explain to my Japanese friend the joke behind this sort of nonsense. I don't
know that I ever managed to explain it at all.

Truthfully, this "make me make you" or "make me make you make him" etc. is
more a verbal polemic in English. It's more likely to be heard on the
playground among kids as a threat of sorts than between serious adults.
Between adults, it would most likely be a joke; if it wasn't a joke, then
between adults it just sounds extremely immature.

As a joke the concatenated causatives can get quite long and absurd: _make him
make me make you make her go_. I'm not even sure that a native English speaker
really follows all of this... it just becomes a kind of absurd joke or in-
your-face verbal assault.

My point being: this is perhaps a linguistic polemic more natural to English
than to other languages.

Is this sort of concatenated verbiage easily done in Japanese ("easily"
meaning, in a manner that it would be naturally understood)? If so, how would
you do it?

* * *

Some very interesting links have been provided in the comments, but the linked
questions and answers don't quite match nicely with what I'm trying to get at
here. I think that's in part my fault for how I framed the question in terms
of _make me make you_.

But here's a perfectly understandable, though convoluted, concatenation of
causation in English that I wouldn't know how to start expressing in Japanese
(except very clunkily).

So imagine the situation: my brother-in-law dislikes me, but he's coming to my
birthday party nevertheless. He won't talk to me, so he gets my sister (his
wife) to talk to me. My mom is very proud of her ability to bake, but her
pride is misplaced. Her cakes taste horrendously. So, my brother-in-law wants
to make sure, since he dislikes me so much, that at least the cake will not
further contribute to his displeasure. So, this is what I wound up telliing my
cousin about what happened: (a convoluted background story for a convoluted
point of grammar that very easily flows in English)

> My brother-in-law made my sister make me make my mom not bake a cake for my
> birthday, but instead buy one.

How would one even begin to say this in Japanese?

In fact, the matter of the _causative_ might be incidental because in English
this also could have been worded without a causative:

> He asked my sister to ask me to ask mom not to....

But, let's just stick with the matter of causatives here. Perhaps extra-credit
for someone to also come up with the concatenation of "asking".




You would need a concrete verb, instead of just _make_ , for the sister's
action. My choice would be 言う, like _tell_ in English, and this puts the
speaker into the slot for the target, or indirect object, of that action, also
marked with に but not as the agent in a causative relationship.

> 義理の弟が妹に私に［〜］言わせた。

Inside the brackets is the content of what the sister told the speaker to,
again, _tell_ their mother to do or not to do, and the inner-most causative
relationship may appear here.

> 義理の弟が妹に私に［母親にケーキを自分で焼かないで買わせるように］言わせた。

We ended up with two simple causatives. So I think the first link does answer
your question. You should avoid concatenated causatives.




You would need a concrete verb, instead of just _make_ , for the sister's
action. My choice would be 言う, like _tell_ in English, and this puts the
speaker into the slot for the target, or indirect object, of that action, also
marked with に but not as the agent in a causative relationship.

> 義理の弟が妹に私に［〜］言わせた。

Inside the brackets is the content of what the sister told the speaker to,
again, _tell_ their mother to do or not to do, and the inner-most causative
relationship may appear here.

> 義理の弟が妹に私に［母親にケーキを自分で焼かないで買わせるように］言わせた。

We ended up with two simple causatives. So I think the first link does answer
your question. You should avoid concatenated causatives.

