A causative construction lets one subject report that they brought about an event performed by someone else: I made him laugh, she had the car fixed, let the children play. English collapses an enormous amount of meaning into four little verbs — make, let, have, get — plus a bare or to-infinitive, and trusts context to sort out the rest. Norwegian splits the same territory across få ("cause to / get") and la ("let / allow"), backed up by tvinge ("force"), be ("ask"), overtale ("persuade"), hjelpe ("help") — and the choice between them is not free. The decisive grammatical fact is complementation: some of these verbs demand til å before the infinitive, while la demands a bare infinitive with no til å at all. Get that split wrong and the sentence collapses. This page maps the whole system. For the introductory overview, see the basic få/la causative.
få noen til å — "make / get someone to do something"
The core causative is få + object + til å + infinitive: you get someone to do something, you make them do it, you bring it about. The til å is obligatory — it is the joint that connects the object to the action they perform.
Hun fikk ham til å le.
She made him laugh. / She got him to laugh.
Ingenting fikk ham til å ombestemme seg.
Nothing could make him change his mind.
Hvordan fikk du barna til å spise grønnsaker?
How did you get the children to eat vegetables?
Note that få … til å is softer than English "force"; it covers the whole range from "managed to get" (gentle, persuasive) to "made" (firm). It does not imply coercion by itself. For genuine coercion you switch verbs to tvinge (below). The English "make" that means "compel" therefore lands on få … til å most of the time, but on tvinge … til å when the force is real.
la noen + bare infinitive — "let / allow someone to do something"
La is the permissive: you let or allow someone to do something — you don't cause it, you simply don't prevent it. And here is the crucial structural break: la takes a bare infinitive — no til å. The object is followed directly by the plain infinitive.
La barna leke litt til.
Let the children play a bit longer. (bare infinitive: leke, not 'til å leke')
Kan du la meg være i fred?
Can you leave me alone? / let me be in peace?
Han lot meg kjøre den nye bilen.
He let me drive the new car. (lot = past of la; bare infinitive kjøre)
The contrast with få is the heart of the system. Få ham til å le = you caused the laughing (it happened because of you). La ham le = you permitted the laughing (it happened, and you didn't stop it). Cause vs permit — and the grammar tracks the meaning: the causer needs the til å bridge, the permitter takes the bare infinitive.
Jeg fikk henne til å synge. / Jeg lot henne synge.
I got her to sing (caused it). / I let her sing (allowed it).
la være å — "refrain from / stop doing"
A high-frequency idiom built on la is la være (å) — literally "let (it) be", meaning "refrain from / not do / stop". With an infinitive it takes å: la være å … ("refrain from …-ing"). As a bare command, la være! means "don't!" / "stop it!"
Du burde la være å røyke.
You should stop smoking / give up smoking.
La være! Det er ikke ditt.
Don't! / Leave it! That's not yours. (informal)
tvinge / be / overtale noen til å (om å) — force, ask, persuade
A whole family of "cause/influence someone to act" verbs patterns with til å (or om å for be), exactly like få and unlike la. The semantic difference is in the manner of getting the action done — by force, by request, by persuasion — but the syntax is uniform.
De tvang meg til å svare på alle spørsmålene.
They forced me to answer all the questions. (tvinge … til å)
Jeg ba ham om å vente utenfor.
I asked him to wait outside. (be … om å — note om, not til)
Til slutt overtalte hun foreldrene til å la henne reise.
In the end she persuaded her parents to let her travel. (overtale … til å; note the embedded la + bare infinitive 'la henne reise')
That third example is worth a second look: it nests the two patterns — overtale … til å (with til å) governs la henne reise (with a bare infinitive). One sentence, both frames, each correct. The lesson: the choice of til å vs bare infinitive is dictated by the governing verb, locally, every time.
| Verb | Meaning | Complement | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| la | let / allow | bare infinitive | la ham gå |
| få … til å | make / get to | til å + inf | få ham til å gå |
| tvinge … til å | force to | til å + inf | tvinge ham til å gå |
| be … om å | ask to | om å + inf | be ham om å gå |
| overtale … til å | persuade to | til å + inf | overtale ham til å gå |
| hjelpe … (med) å | help to | (med) å + inf | hjelpe ham (med) å gå |
få + object + past participle — the resultative ("have/get something done")
Now the construction English speakers most often miss. Få + object + past participle is the resultative: you arrange for a result to be achieved — you get something done, you have something done (by someone else, usually unnamed). The verb after the object is a past participle, not an infinitive, because it describes the resulting state of the object.
Jeg fikk reparert bilen.
I got the car fixed / had the car repaired. (reparert = past participle)
Endelig fikk vi malt huset.
We finally got the house painted.
Har du fått klippet håret?
Have you had your hair cut? / got your hair cut?
Watch the agent: in Jeg fikk reparert bilen, I did not necessarily wield the spanner — most likely a mechanic did, and I arranged it. This is precisely English "I had the car repaired / I got the car fixed". It contrasts sharply with the infinitive causative Jeg fikk noen til å reparere bilen ("I got someone to repair the car"), which names or implies the doer and uses til å + infinitive.
The two få frames, side by side, are the high-value distinction of this page:
Jeg fikk mekanikeren til å reparere bilen.
I got the mechanic to repair the car. (få + agent + til å + INFINITIVE — names the doer)
Jeg fikk reparert bilen.
I got the car repaired. (få + object + PAST PARTICIPLE — result-focused, doer backgrounded)
Mapping English make / let / have / get
English uses four verbs and lets the infinitive do the rest; Norwegian uses the verb choice to encode the meaning. The rough mapping:
| English | Sense | Norwegian |
|---|---|---|
| make sb do (persuasive) | bring about | få noen til å + inf |
| make sb do (coercive) | compel | tvinge noen til å + inf |
| let sb do | permit | la noen + bare inf |
| have/get sth done | resultative | få + obj + past participle |
| have sb do | arrange a person to act | få/be noen til/om å + inf |
The trickiest cell for English speakers is the resultative ("have the car fixed"), because English "have" gives no clue that Norwegian wants a past participle. The second trickiest is let, because the bare infinitive after la fights the English speaker's instinct to insert a linker.
Common Mistakes
❌ La meg til å hjelpe deg.
Wrong — la never takes til å; it takes a bare infinitive.
✅ La meg hjelpe deg.
Let me help you.
La is the permissive; it is followed directly by the bare infinitive. Inserting til å (transfer from få … til å) is the number-one error.
❌ Hun fikk ham le.
Wrong — få as a causative needs til å before the infinitive.
✅ Hun fikk ham til å le.
She made him laugh.
Få noen til å requires til å. Dropping it (transfer from English "made him laugh", with no linker) is the mirror-image mistake of the la error.
❌ Jeg fikk noen til å reparere bilen, og nå er den til å reparere.
Confused frames — the resultative is a past participle, not a second til å reparere.
✅ Jeg fikk reparert bilen.
I got the car repaired. (resultative = past participle)
For "get/have something done", use få + object + past participle (reparert), not til å + infinitive.
❌ Jeg ba ham til å vente.
Wrong preposition — be takes om å, not til å.
✅ Jeg ba ham om å vente.
I asked him to wait.
Be ("ask") selects om å, unlike tvinge/overtale, which take til å. This is lexically fixed — you memorise be … om å.
❌ Han lot meg til å kjøre bilen.
Double error — la (past lot) takes a bare infinitive, no til å.
✅ Han lot meg kjøre bilen.
He let me drive the car.
Lot is the past of la, so the bare-infinitive rule still applies: lot meg kjøre, not lot meg til å kjøre.
Key Takeaways
- la = let/allow + bare infinitive (la barna leke); never til å.
- få … til å = make/get someone to do (fikk ham til å le); til å obligatory.
- tvinge/overtale … til å, be … om å = force/persuade/ask; all take til å (or om å for be).
- få + object + past participle = the resultative "have/get something done" (fikk reparert bilen) — doer backgrounded.
- English make/let/have/get maps onto four Norwegian frames; the verb choice and the til å-vs-bare-infinitive split carry the meaning.
- la være (å) = refrain from / stop; la være! = "don't!" (informal).
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Causatives: få noen til å, la, and få noe gjortB2 — How Norwegian builds 'make/get someone to do' (få … til å), 'let someone do' (la + bare infinitive), and 'have something done' (få + object + participle) — and why the til å is the trap.
- Infinitive Clauses and ControlB2 — Infinitive clauses with their own structure — the for…å frame that gives the infinitive an explicit subject, subject vs object control, the perfect infinitive (å ha + supine), and the bare-infinitive perception/causative construction (jeg så ham gå).
- Small Clauses and ResultativesC1 — Subject–predicate units with no finite verb: resultatives (malte huset rødt), depictives (spiste kjøttet rått), bare-infinitive perception complements (så ham komme), and consider-class predicates — with the adjective agreement English lacks.