syntactic blend? extension of pattern?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

from a letter (by e-mail) to The Advocate (9/27/05, p. 14) from Diane
Hartford:

Alan Sverdlik's article "Enslaved to Painkillers" [August 30] caused
me pause.  I am a 42-year-old lesbian and registered nurse who has
been using narcotic analgesics for almost three years.

[cause s.o. pause (N? V?) = give s.o. pause (N) + cause s.o. to pause
(V), or make s.o. pause (V) + cause s.o. to pause (V), or give s.o.
pause (N)  + cause s.o. surprise (N)?  there's a fair number of
"caused me pause" examples, though: 334 raw Google web hits (137 with
dupes removed), plus "causing me pause" with 79 (reduced to 33),
"causes me pause" with 572 (down to 240), and "cause me pause" with
512 (down to 189).  ca. 334 raw hits for "caused me pause" contrasts
with ca. 86,000 raw hits for "gave me cause" and ca. 10,700 for
"caused me to pause", so "cause s.o. pause" is definitely a minority
option -- but not a very rare one, which suggests that if this is, or
was, a blend for some people, for others it might be an extension of
one or another of the patterns involved.  certainly, for some
speakers the base-form complement pattern of make/have/let s.o. V
("They made/had/let me think") has been extended to "cause" (495 raw
Google web hits for "caused me think"), which is normally an
infinitive-complement verb: cause/force/require/allow s.o. to V.]

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)