How to express yourself with a causal connective

Subjectivity and causal connectives in Dutch, German and French
Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-90-420-0856-4
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 17, 360 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 220 mm, Gewicht: 626 g

Reihe: Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication

The Dutch, German and French languages display a variety of regularly used connectives all of which introduce causes, arguments or reasons, such as Dutch omdat, want and aangezien, German weil, denn and da, and French parce que, car and puisque. Why should languages have different connectives to express the notion of backward causality? The central argument developed in this book is that different connectives express different degrees of subjectivity. In a series of corpus analyses it is shown that the degree of subjectivity of the main participant involved in the causal relation strongly predicts the occurrence of one or another connective. Hence, language users have at their disposal connectives of varying degrees of subjectivity. In an analysis of judiciary sentences, it is revealed that speakers are actually sensitive of this semantic distinction, and sometimes even exploit it for their communicative purposes: in order to conceal their subjective involvement, judges prefer objective over subjective connectives.

This volume makes a contribution to the study of language in use, by applying empirical methods to authentic language data. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with discourse coherence, perspective and subjectivity, corpus linguistics and cross-linguistic analyses.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pit, Mirna

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Einzelne Sprachen & Sprachfamilien
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Grammatik, Syntax, Morphologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Causal connectives: different perspectives
Chapter 3 Subjectivity
Chapter 4 Subjectivity and Dutch backward causal connectives
Chapter 5 A crosslinguistic study
Chapter 6 Connectives and meanings
References
Index of names
Appendices