This talk presents the various ways in which Kwa languages encode and express the notion of causation. In the languages surveyed,
there are three main ways of expressing causation: (a) lexical predicates (e.g. change of state verbs), (b) serial verb constructions, and
(c) analytic/syntactic causative predicates/constructions. In most of the languages, there are different morphological/lexical alternations
between verbs in the expression of causative and non-causative (autonomous) events which may shed crucial insight into argument structure patterns for some verbs in the languages. In many Kwa languages, the syntactic/analytic causative predicate is a grammaticalized form of the lexical verb ‘give’ although some of the languages use a form of the verb ‘do’. All the languages which use a grammaticalized form ‘give’ as a syntactic/analytic causative also have a ‘do’-causative, but not vice-versa. The syntax of analytic/syntactic causatives in Kwa range from a full complement sentence (S-type) to a reduced complex sentence (I-type) which displays properties of integrated serial verb construction.