Causality in Language and in Discourse (original) (raw)
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The grammar of causatives and the conceptual structure of events
1994
Analytic causative constructions can best be described äs extensions of simpler kinds of expressions, rather than äs reductions from more complex underlying structures. In particular, causatives of intransitive predicates (e.g. I made Mary cryj are viewed äs modelled on simple two-participant clauses (like I ate the cake,), and causatives of transitive predicates (e.g. He had the servant taste the foodj are seen äs modelled on simple threeparticipant clauses (like I gave Mary a flower, or She broke it with a hammer-i.e. mainly ditransitive and instrumental clause types).
Causality, lexicon, and discourse meaning
2003
This paper is about causality, defined as a specific relation between eventuality on an event-state chain, called a 'causal chain'. Though causality is a dynamic temporal relation, the expression of causality in discourse contrasts with temporal discourses, in which temporal order between eventualities is parallel to the sequential order of linguistic segments in discourse. Causal discourses are backward, introducing first the effect and second the cause. This property is used to analyze possible causal discourses with and without explicitated causal links by means of connectives (in French parce que, donc, et), and mainly their causal and inferential uses. Finally, the paper tries to answer why causal relations in discourse are used to convey explanation and argumentation. Explanation is the discourse relation corresponding to causal relations in the world, whereas argumentation is a special use of causal relation in discourse, implying causality between states belonging to two causal chains.
The Linguistic Representations of Causing Events and Caused Events in Narrative Discourse
Cognitive semantics, 2015
This article examines Talmyan claims on the order, linguistic form, and Figure/Ground alignment of causing events and caused events. Narratives are elicited from a set of 20 video clips of real situations. 50 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were interviewed to set up a closed corpus of 1000 causative sentences. It is found that the data fell into three major types: the causing events are represented prior to the caused event; the caused events are specified initially in bei-construction; the caused events appear independently. The results suggest that Talmyan claims about the morphosyntactic features of causative expressions are not universal. The patterns in which causal events are described appear to be language specific and context dependent. It is hypothesized that causative expressions are best characterized in terms of continuums: the continuum of causative constructions; the continuum of causative elements; the continuum of causing event; and the continuum of caused events.
Bolly,C. & Degand, L. (eds.) /Text-Structuring. Across the Line of Speech and Writing Variation/ (/Cor//pora and Language in Use/ series n°2), 2013
Presenting two contents as cause-effect, though a basic discourse operation, is neither simple nor straightforward. Previous research has identified different types of causals. The classifications and analyzes generally focus on certain connectives, are mainly based on written texts and often stem from a sentential perspective. But focusing on speech and taking a discourse perspective, other causal constructions can be identified. In this paper, causal constructions are analyzed in three types of oral texts in Catalan: conversation, oral texts obtained through a semi-structured interview protocol and a political debate. The analysis shows that causal constructions exhibit some specific properties in speech and that causality is not only expressed by means of prototypical causal constructions (i.e., including a causal conjunction). There are other constructions that activate the causal relation at discourse level, involve presuppositions and are subjective or intersubjective as for modal charge. The most frequent in Catalan are constructions including a modal marker either added to a basic connective (perquè clar S 'because of course S') or preceding a discourse segment (és que S, '(it) is (just) that S').
2015
The comprehension of sentences expressing instigative causation (e.g., The horse makes the camel run) was investigated in children between the ages of 2;0 and 4;4, speaking English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. Crosslinguistic differences in development reveal the roles of morphological (causative particle, case inflection) and syntactic devices (periphrasis, word order) in guiding children's processing of such constructions. It is suggested that local cues (inflectional suffixes, particles, specialized causative verb forms) contribute to the more rapid development of sentence processing strategies in Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. The word order systems of English and Italian, which require that the listener hold the entire sentence pattern in mind in order to determine underlying semantic relations, contribute to slower development on this task, Children's comprehension of causative constructions was studied as one part of a large cross-linguistic investigation conducted in
Causativization by means of transitivizing and detransitivizing morphological strategies
Causativization can only be applied to intransitives in many languages. Some may even restrict it to inagentive intransitives. This paper provides a plausible answer to the question why languages behave like this. It is argued that causative constructions and causativization should be understood primarily in semantic terms, not solely in terms of valency increase and adding a causer. Evidence is provided for a basic common function of causatives and passives (deactorization) that explains the observation that in a number of languages, causatives and passives are marked in the same way.