<p>In several languages, unergative verbs are able to undergo the causative alternation, contrary to common assumptions. Direct causatives of unergatives raise a vexing question concerning the status of the causee: given the unergative nature of the verb, the causee should be realized as an external argument; however, direct causatives are assumed to make only one external argument position available, which must already be occupied by the causer. This paper investigates direct causatives of unergatives in Hindi-Urdu, Turkish, and Sason Arabic and shows that they have a regular transitive structure. The causee is merged as an internal argument and receives a patient-like interpretation clearly distinct from the agentive reading assigned to the subject of the intransitive unergative. To account for these findings, I link direct causatives of unergatives to variable unaccusativity, that is, the phenomenon that verbs can allow for both an unaccusative and an unergative use. Concretely, I propose that the structures that have been described as direct causatives of unergatives are not, strictly speaking, causatives of unergatives. Rather, the normally unergative root takes on an unaccusative behavior in such contexts and can thus causativize as usual. I address the issue of crosslinguistic variation in the availability of direct causatives of unergatives and I discuss further implications of the analysis for the general architecture of the lexicon–syntax interface.</p>