In this paper I consider three different approaches to this question and defend one of them. The approaches I discuss are all variations of the basic idea that causative predicates involve a causative head that is absent from the structure of the corresponding noncausative. 1 My aim here is to make a proposal about the argument structure of this causative head. Ideally, the argument structure would be uniform crosslinguistically. This in mind, I will first make a proposal for Japanese and Finnish, where empirical evidence distinguishing between the three positions is clear, and then extend the analysis to English. But to show what the data to be presented bear on, I will start by laying out three possible trees for (la).