Learn English – Word order for “What is… that … called?”

Here is how the example sentences are grammatical:

• The old man the boats.
  The old [people] [man/serve on] the boats

• While Anna dressed the baby spit up on the bed.
  While Anna [got] dressed, the baby spit up on the bed.

• The man returned to his house was happy.
  The man [who was returned to his house] was happy.

• Fat people eat accumulates.
  [The fat that people eat] accumulates

• She told me a little white lie will come back to haunt me.
  She told me [that] [a little white lie will come back to haunt me].

• We painted the wall with cracks.
  We painted the wall [that has] cracks.

Want is not causative.

A Causative verb can be paraphrased as "cause S to be true", where S is some proposition that might refer to

• an event (e.g, cause it to explode)
  They exploded the bomb they'd dug up
• an action (cause someone to trip)
  His older brother tripped him accidentally
• a state (cause someone to be dead)
  We wouldn't have to kill anyone

These are, respectively, paraphrases for the causative transitive verbs explode, trip, and kill. All causative verbs are transitive, and there often exist intransitive inchoative verbs with the same shape (it exploded, he tripped); but not always (he died, but not *he killed -- at least not in the same sense as he died).

Wanting, of course, causes nothing to happen by itself, though it can serve as a motivation. As Barrie says, it's a mental state verb, very close to the deontic sense of the modal verb will (in German the modal verb wollen straightforwardly means 'to want').