ABSTRACT
In this sentence, ‘nakama’ died for some reason, and ‘watashi’ thinks that there might have been something she/he could have done to prevent the death. Therefore, even though ‘watashi’ did not kill ‘nakama,’ ‘watashi’ feels like she/he caused the death. The sentence structure of the adversative causative is the same as the o-causative. It is therefore possible to interpret the example given here as though it is o-causative, i.e. ‘watashi’ made his/her friend die, for example, by not giving obviously needed help.
