Causal Categories
in Discourse and Cognition
Edited by Ted Sanders Eve Sweetser
2009
Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis
Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders and Arie Jlerhagen
1. Introduction
1The meaning and the use of different types of causality markers has often been described with reference
to
our conceptual understanding of causality (e.g.Talmy 1988; Verhagen and Kemmer 1997; Wolff and Song 2003). We focus on causal connectives -causality markers functioning at the discourse level of linguistic structure, relating discourse segments into a coherent whole ( cf. Hobbs 1979;
Mann
and Thompson 1988; Sanders, Spooren and Noordman 1993). In this paper, we adopt the cognitive semantic view that causality markers specifi- cally have a categorizing function: when selecting one of the options available in a language, the speaker assigns the causal relations expressed to a specific conceptual type of causality. The meaning and use of causal connectives has recently been characterized in terms of the concept of "subjectivity" (e.g. Pan- der Maat and Sanders 2000, 2001; Pander Maat and Degand 2001; Pit 2003;Degand and Pander Maat 2003; Stukker 2005; Verhagen 2005; see also the contributions to the present volume). Thus, typical examples of the frequently used Dutch connectives daardoor, daarom and dus marking "forward" Cl!usality (cause precedes effect in order of presentation) can be characterized as follows:
(I) Hetwas extreem koud. Daardoor waren de waterleidingen gesprongen.
'It was extremely cold. Daardoor the water pipes had burst.' (2) Het was extreem koud. Daarom :-tochten we een caje op.
'It was extremely cold. Daarom we entered a cafe.' (3) Het is onbewolkt. Dus het zal we! koud worden vandaag.
'The sky is clear. Dus it will probably be cold today.'
Daardoor is typically used for marking objective, "non-volitional" causal processes occurring in observable reality (1 ). Daarom is typically used in con- texts of objective, 'volitional" causality, in which an volitional action performed in the real world ("entering a care" in (2]), is motivated by a situation presented as the cause ("the extreme cold"). Dus is typically used for marking subjective,
l This chapter goes back to Stukker (2005) -- notably chapter 4.
120 Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders and Arie ~rhagen
epistemic causal relations, in which a causal relation is constructed on the il- locutionary level, between a conclusion of the speaker, presented as the causal effect ("it will be cold today" in [3]), and an argument fimctioning as the causal antecedent ("the clear sky").
The idea that each one of the connectives is related to a specific conceptual model of causality will be referred to in this paper as the "categorization hypoth- esis". This hypothesis v11as tested in several corpus studies (e.g. Pander Maat and Sanders 1995; Pander Maat and Degand 2001; Pit 2003; Stukker 2005). These studies revealed that, indeed, the majority of connectives' natural usage contexts reflect these conceptual categories of causality more or less directly. In a mi- nority of cases, however, the relation of connectives to their assumedly typical causality category appears to he less straightforward. Under specific circum.- stances, connectives are used in contexts which are taken to belong to other connectives' causality categories. Well-knoWll examples are the usage of dus in volitional causal relations as in ( 4 ), and the usage of daarom in epistemic causal relations as in (5).
(4) Het was extreem koud. Dus zochten we een cafe op.
'It was extremely cold. Dus we entered a
care.'
(5) llet is onbewolkt. Daarom zal het wei koud wonien vandaag.
'The sky is clear. Daarom it will probably be cold today.'
Should these findings he interpreted as evidence against the categorization hypothesis? This is indeed what has been proposed by several of lhe studies mentioned above. In this paper, we follow a different line of reasoning. We re-interpret the findings from previous connective studies within a usage-based framework. The "usage-based approach to language" assumes that variation is an inherent characteristic oflangnage use, and seeks tu explain occurring patterns of variation with reference to more general cognitive mechaniqms ( cf. Langacker
!987; Bybee 1985, 2006, 2007; contributions to Barlow and Kemmer2000).ln line with this framework, we propose that an interplay of conceptual and usage factors can explain why the usage of Dutch causal connectives does not always conform to abstract detinitions that seem to he quite straightforward otherwise.
Our hypothesis is that the apparent"counterexamples" are actually non-typical, or: peripheral, members (referred to in this study as "non-prototypical usages":
NPU) of the very same conceptual category the connectives refer to in their more typical usage contexts (referred to as "prototypical usages": PU). In this paper, we focus on one specific factor c{JJJSing variation in connective use, namely: the idea that language users categorize causal relations not on the basis of" objective reality", but on the basis of their subjective construal of the situation (cf. Lan-
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 121 gacker 1987; Verhagen 2000), and on one specific factor constraining variation, namely: the prototypicality structure of semantic categories discussed above.
The approach proposed here has several advantages: not only can it adequately describe the flexibility connectives show in language use, it can also explain their flexibility a,q a consequence of their categori7..ation function and as a consequence of more general cogoitive mechanisms governing natural language use.
In section2, we discuss previous analyses ofDotch causal connectives, focus- ing on the usage types considered "problematic" for the categorization analysis.
In section 3, we discuss theoretical assumptions underlying the usage-based per- spective on language use that are relevant to our analys.is of causal connectives in terms of prototypicality structure. Section 4 presents results of an analysis of PU and NPU of daardoor, daarom and dus in a corpus of newspaper texts.
2. Patterns in cansal connective use
The meaning and use of causal connectives have been deserihed with reference
to the cognitively basic concepts of subjectivity and volitionality. The impor- tance of the concept subjectivity in determining linguistic phenomena is widely atte;ied (see for example Traugott 1989, 1995; Langacker 1990; Lyons 1995;
cf. discnssion in Sanders, Sanders and· Sweetser this volume). Notwithstanding terminological differences (Pit 2003; De Smet and Verstraete 2006), theorists agree that subjectivity is to a great exteut equivalent to "speaker involvement".
We detine "speaker involvement" as: referring to the degree to which the present speaker is involved in the construal of the causal relation.2 A causal relation is
"subjective" if for itq interpretation reference to the speaker is needed Con- versely, a linguistic element counts as "objective" if speaker involvement is absent in the interpretation of the causal relation. The results of the studies men- tioned above suggest that prototypiCal usage contexts of daard<Jor, daarom and dus can he related to different categories of"objective" and "subjective causal- ity" detined in terms of"speaker's roles": the speaker acts as a "concluder", as an volitional agent, or is absent Typical corpus examples of each category are (6)-(8)3:
2 This characterization is based on the definition presented by Pander Maat & Degand
(2001: 214). The original definition is: "the degree to which the present speaker is implicitly involved. .. " Since SI can also be signaled explictly (with modal elements, perspective markers, etc.), we did not include the element "implicit".
3 Examples discussed are ( ~mless stated otherwise) fragments taken from the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw (year of publication: 200 l ), part oft he corpus analyLed by
Stukker (2005).
122 Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders andArie ferhagen
(6) De Boeing 747, het duurste vliegtuig dat rondvliegt, daalt steeds sneller in waarde. De afgelopen jaren is het vermogen van vliegmaatschappijen dllardoor met vele miljarden dollars verminderd.
'The Boeing 747, the most expensive plane in the air, is continuing to diminish in value rapidly. Daardoor airlines' capital has decreased by billions of dollars over the last few years.4•
(7) (ln Denmark and in the Netherlands, carcasses of cows older than 30 months are tested for the cattle plague BSE). Andere Ianden zijn nag niet klaar om elk voor de s/acht aangeboden rund te onderzoeken. Zij vemietigen daarom op grote schaal dieren.
'Other countries are not yet ready for testing any individual hovine des- tined for consumption. Daarom they destroy animals on a large scale,' (8) (Dutch soldiers who served in Bosuia relate the high incidence of
leukemia among them to frequent exposure to impoverished uranium), Maar de huidige hypothese wijt de leukemieiin aan een virus(. . . ). Het is dus denkhaar dat de soldllten die nu leukemie hebben gekregen, slachtof for zijn van iets anders dan verarmd uranium.
'But the current hypothesis attributes the leukemias to a vims. ( ... ) Dus it is conceivable that the soldiers who suffer from leukemia now, are victims of something else than impoverished uranium.'
The differences hetwcen the causal relations represented above can he de- scribed as follows: Dus is typically used for marking epistemic causal relations5, in which a causal relation is constructed hetween a conclusion of the speaker presented as the causal effect ("it is conceivable that. .• " in [8]), and an argu- ment fimctioning as the causal antecedent (the faet that the current hypothesis attributes leukemia to a virus). In epi'>lemic causal relations, the speaker func- tions as the source of the causal relation (it is he who relates argument and concinsjon). In other words: reference to the speaker is obligatory in order to interpret the causal relation correctly, hence the causal relation is subjective.
4 We focus on lhe causal relations mainly from a conceptual perspective. Therefore, lhe English glosses of our Dutch text material do not contain lireral translations;
neither did we attempt to reproduce specific syntactic characteristics of the Dutch causal connectives (see for a discussion e.g. Evers-Vermeul, 2005).
5 The category of subjective causal relations also contains "speech act" relations, in which the causal relation is constructed between a speech act and a proposition functioning as a justification ofthat speech act (Sweetser 1990); an example would be What are yau doing tonight? Because there is a good movie on). Speech act relations hardly occurred in our corpus; therefore, they will not be taken into acconnt in this paper.
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives; a usage-based analysis 123 This type of speaker involvement is lacking in causal relatious typically marked with daardoor and daarom. These types of relations can he seen as inherenrly "objective".6 Fragments (6) and (7) both descrihe causal relations hetween states of affairs in the observable world, having their source outside the speaker. Yet, they differ Vlith respect to the concept of volitionality. The causal relation in (7) describes an volitional act which is motivated by the situation described in the first segment Volitionality is ahsent in fragment ( 6) where one physical process induces another one, without intervention of a human heing. In Dutch, volitional causality is typically expressed with daarom; non-volitional causality is typically expressed with daanloor. The distinction hetween voli- tional and non-volitional causality is closely related to a distinction exhibited by Dutch causal auxiliary verbs, causality markers operating at the clause level of the linguistic structure (Stukker, Sanders and Verhagen 2008). The causal verbs doen and Iaten distinghuish hetween physical, "inanimate" causal pro- cesses and causal processes in wbich animate heings are involved. Just like the distinction objective-subjective, the distinction volitional-non-volitional is con- sidered to he a cognitively important one; it reflects the conceptual model of
"Naive Dualism" (Verhagen and Kemmer 1997; see also D' Anrade 1987).
"Typicality", or "prototypicality" is defined in this study in terms of usage frequency. The more frequent a usage-type occurs in natural language use, the more prototypical it is taken to be (see section 3).ln the remninder of this pa- per, the connectives' prototypical usage contexts are referred to as "PU". As we already noted in section 1, in a minority of cases, usage-contexts of daar- door, damum and dus do not conform to the patterns described above. Under specific circumstances, co1111ectives are used in contexts which are taken to he- long to other co1111ectives' causality categories. These non-prototypical usage types (which we will call "NPU'') oeeur with each of the connectives under investigation, in all of the causality categories discussed. By way of illustra- tion, we discuss the use of dus in volitional causal contexts, assumed to he the prototypical contexts of use for daarom. Consider (9) and (10):
6 Approaches disagree on the question whether volitional causality should count as in- herently subjective (see for example Pander Maat & Degand 2001 ), or as inherently objective (Stukker 2005), In this paper we assume that subjectivity is not an intrinsic characteristic of volitional causality; the fact thal some 4'subject of consciousness"
necessarily plays a role opens the way to introduce elements of subjectivity in such wntexts. The souree of subjectivity is then transferred from the speaker to an·
other "subject of consciousness" ("Perspectivization": J. Sanders & Spooren 1997;
specifically with reference to causal relations, see Sanders, Sanders & Sweetser this volume).
124 Ninke Stuklrer, Ted Sanders and Arie W?rhagen
(9) (Bystanders ntsh to help outatt.'le Volendam pub fire.) "Ikwoon vlakbij, dus ik ben brandwondencreme gaan halen."
"'I live nearby dus I ran to get burn ointment.'"
(10) (Letter to the editor discussing the consequences oflowering the age limit for child adoption in the Netherlanda.) Het is allemaal heel goed te begrijpen dat de realistische adoptieouders, na de wachttijd van vele jaren, hun kindje zo snel mogelijk willen hebben. Dus kiezen ze voor
een kintije uit China of een ander "snel" land.
'It is only natural that realistic adoptive parents, atler having waited for many years, want to have their child as soon as possible. Dus they opt
for a child from China or from another "quick" country.'
NPU of dus and daarom exhibit systematic patterning. Pander Maat and Sanders (2000) and Pander Maat and Degand (200 I) observed that volitional·
causal relations marked with dus show a higher degree of subjectivity than those marked with daarom. Tbe SOC of dus-marked contexts referentially co- incide with the speaker (see [9]) more often than the daarom-marked contexts do (see for example [7]; Pander Maat and Sanders 2000: 73-74; Pander Maat and Degand 2001: 239-240). In addition, volitional contexts marked with dus or daarom differ in terms of perspective configuration (Pander Maat and Sanders 2000: 71-3; for backward causal connectives, see Pit 2003; see also the chapter by Sanders et al. in the present volume). Volitional causal relations marked with dus more otlen contain "continuous speaker perspective" than those marked with daarom. Both (9) and (10) contain continnous speaker perspective. In the former, the speaker is continuously referred to by "I". In the latter fragment, the·
causal relation is reported from the perspective of "they", who functions as an embedded speaker, from whose perspective the causal relation is reported. Lin~
guistic signals construing this interpretation are the occurrence of perspective markers in the cattse-segment (mental state verb "want" and evaluative ele- ment "as soon as possible", both grannnatically attJ.ibuted to the prinaary SOC
"they"7). Since this actor perspective is not explicitly "blocked" in the second segment, we assume that the perspective is continued. In fragment (7), which is representative of volitional causal relations marked with daarom, explicit indications of perspectivization are lacking.
In the remainder of this paper, \ve Vlrill argue thatNPU of a specific connective are adequately analyzed with reference to the causal category the connective is taken to refer to in its PU. As we will argue, a recurring pattern seems to be that
7 The tllctthat in this specific fragment the perspective of"tbey" is embedded underthe
speaker's own evaluation does not make a difference for the analysis presented here.
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 125
non-typically used connectives seem to import specific elements of their PU into the foreign context, creating ambiguity in terms of causality category. In order to characterize the contrast between volitional causal relations marked with dus rather than with daarom, for example, reference to dus' more typical context of use (epistemic cattsality) is essential, no matter how subtle these differences are, or with what linguistic indications "speaker involvement" is construed.
The inverse pattern seems to occur in epistemic causal relations marked with daarom. These contexts systematically contain less subjective elements than those marked with dus (Pander Maat and Sanders 2000; Pander Maat and Degand 200 I), which cao be interpreted as an indication that daarom 's epistemic NPU are in tact conceptually related to its PU of descriptive (content, objective) volitional causality. Previous studies did not analyze NPU within the objective causal domain (of daardoor and daarom), but we will see below that a similar pattern holds in these cases.
3. A usage-based interpretation of patterns in causal connective use
Before we start analyzing the usage of daardoor, daarom and dus in terms of PU and NPU (see section 4), a crucial question is: How is the occurrence of NPU to be accounted for at all?
We propose to do so with reference to general mechanisms of langusge use.
'The relation between linguistic knowledge and langusge nse has been studied within the "usage-based approach" to langusge (Langacker 1987, 2000; Bybee 1985, 2006; for an overview sec Barlow and Kemmer2000 and contributions to that volume). The usage-based approach assumes that variation is an inherent characteristic oflangusge use, and it seeks to explain occurring patterns of vari- ation and stability with reference to more general coguitive mechanisms. In this section, we discuss a number of usage mechanisms which, we believe, mediate the relation between the mental representation of the conventional meaning and function of daardoor, daamm and dus, and their occurrence in language use.
The first issue \ve w.mt to address is: Under the assumption that the meaning of daardoor, daarom and dus can adequately be described with reference to clearly delineated, well-defined conceptual categories of causality- how can we explain the variation occurring in contexts of natorallanguage use? We specif- ically focus on "subjective coru;trual" as
a
mechanism tJnderlying linguistic categorization (3.1) Tite seeond issue is: in view of this variation, how can we maintain the idea that daardoor, daarom and dus bave a constant meaning? We focns on prototypicality structure as a mechanism allowing for flexibility while126 Ninke Stukl<er, Ted Sanders and Arie Verhagen
maintaining the stability required for language to function as a more or less stable system of conventional symbols (3.2). Our claim will be that these mech- anisms in combination explain the pattems of variation and stability observed in daardoor, daarom and dus, starting from the categorization hypothesis.
3.1. Cognitive factors producing variation in language use
How can we explain that lhe meaning of connectives sometimes is, and some- times is not completely congruent with overt signals in the linguistic contexts they are used in? The incongruence observed in Section 2 seems to be of a specific type. The NPU discussed are ambiguous with respect to causality type;
they contain characteristics congruent with the causality type lhe connective is hypothesized to belong to, and at lhe same time lhey contain characteristics incongruent wilh it, but congruent wilh a difforent causality type. We propose to analyze NPU as cases of "subjective construal" of the causality category. It means lhat the same causal relation in reality may be categorized differently by different speakers, according to their particular understanding of the sitnation or lheir rhetorical purposes. This proposal is in line wilh lhe suggestion put for- ward in several studies of linguistic categorization that an expression's meaning is not just an objective characterization of lhe sitnation described. Equally im- portant for linguistic semantics is how lhe speaker chooses to "construe" the sitnation and portray it for expressive purposes (Langacker [ 1990] 2002: 315, 1987; Verhagen 2007; and references cited !here). Subjective construals of cat- egorization in terms of causality were found with causal verbs, marking canial relations at lhe clause level (Verhagen 2000; see also Verhagen 1997; Verhagen and Kemmer 1997). Thus, we can analyze lhe NPU of dus in volitional causal contexts, discussed in section 2 and repeated here, as follows.
( 11) (Bystanders rush to help out at the Volendam pub fire.) "lkwoon vtakhij, dus ik ben brandwondencreme gaan halen."
'"1 live nearby dus I ran to get burn oinlment."'
(12) (Letter to the editor discussing lhe consequences of lowering u'le age limit for child adoption in lhe Nelherlands.) Het is allemaal heel goed te begrijpen dllt de realistische adoptieouders, na de wachttijd van vele jaren, hun kindje zo snel mogelijk willen hebben. Dus kiezen ze voor
een kindje uit China of een ander "sne/" land
'It is only natoral that realistic adoptive parents, after having waited for many years, w.mt to have their child as soon as possible. Dus they opt for a child from China or from another "quick" country.'
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 127 Volitional causal relations ·are inherently objective. They refer to processes which occur in observable reality. This is indicated in the contexts of (II) and (12) by the assertive speech acts, of vvhich the truth is not questioned. At the same time, the related segments of (11) and (12) contain linguistic elements construing subjectivity (speaker reference in fll], perspectivizing devices in [ 12]; see section 2), leaving the context ofuse as a whole ambiguous for causality type. The overall interpretation of the causal relation seerns to be disambiguated by the speaker's choice for a specific connective. Marking with dus in fragments (11) and (12) indicates that lhe reader is expected to construe the causal process as a case of subjective causality, despite its inherently objective character.
The sn~eetive construal analysis of causal connectives proposed here is in line wilh lhe assumption lhat lhe mental representation of a linguistic utterance (in a natural context) is only partly based on lhe overt signals it contains. This assumption is accepted in various branches of linguistic study. The representn- tion a language user builds from a given utterance is, apart from lhe linguistic signals, a product of lhe previous discourse, hackgrom1d knowledge and in- ferencing (Sanders and Spooren 2001: 3; for more elaborate discussions see Fanconnier 1984; Sperber and Wilson 1995; Langacker 1987, 2000; Verhagen 1997, 2000; Radden et al. 2007).11ris inherent context dependency and under- specification of language intplies that individual usage contexts of a linguistic element may vary to lhe extent lhat lheir characteristics conform to lhe more abstract semantic representation associated wilh lhis element in language user's long term memory (Verhagen 1997).
3.2. Cognitive factors retaining stability in language representation The mechanisms discussed in Section 3 .I explain why variation may occur in lhe way abstract semantic knowledge (in our case: concerning causal connec- tives) is mirrored in actual language use. But in view oflhis variation, how can we maintain the idea that daardoor, daarom and dus have a eoustant meaning?
Or put in more general terms: how is it possible lhat language users are able to interpret conceptual models invoked by linguistic elements in a consistent way?
A common asswnption in functionally oriented branches of linguistic theory is that an individnal's linguistic system is fundamentally grounded in "usage events". This assumption has been elaberated notably wilhin what has become known as the "usage-based approach to language" (Langacker 1987, 2000; By- bee 1985, 2006; Goldberg 2005; for an overview see Barlow andKemmer2000 and contributions to that volume). According to this approach, lhe language system does not consist of rules generating grammatical instances of language
128 Ninke Stukke1; Ted Sanders andArie Verhagen
use, but rather of generalizations over individual nsage events, which in
tum
categorize or license other usage events. In other words, according tu the usage- based approach to laugua1,-e, "granuuar is the cognitive organization of one's experience with language" (Bybee 2006: 711 ).Thus it is assumed that grammar ultimately emerges from individual US-
age events. This process is often compared to the more general psychological process that the occurrence of any (psychological) event leaves some kind of trace that facilitates their reoccurrence. Frequently eocountered patterns become
"entreoched" in memory; acquire the statos of cognitive routine that is retrieved and applied without requiring conscious attention. Another process, which oc•
curs parallel to entrenchment, is that of abstraction: the emergeoce of a structure through reinforcement of the commonality inherent in multiple experiences that difter .in some other way (Langacker 2000: 4). In this process, peculiarities of individual instances are filtered out from the representation the language nser has of the entrenched unit This process is reflected in language acquisition pat- terns of childreo (Barlow and Kemmer 2000: xii, see references cited). In the process of abstraction, the case of"schematization" is of particular importance for our porposes. Langacker (2000: 4) defines a "schema" as the commonality that emerges from distinct structores when one abstracts a'ovay from their points of difference by portraying them with lesser precision and specificity.
TI1e phenomenon of schematization lies at the basis of language users' ability to recognize a variety of specific iustances of use as an iustantiation of a specific entrenched strllcture. This is the cognitive ability of categorization: recognize similarities and differences between phenomena. Or from the perspective of our problem: recognize a specific instance of use as a member of an entrenched schema. A number of factors seem to play a role in thLq process, among whicl) contextual priming ( cf. discussion of the context dependency of language in Section 3.1) and the amount of overlap between the "target" and the potential categorizing structure (Langacker 2000: IS~ 17; for a more elaborate discussion see e.g. MacWhinoey 2000).
Categories that emerge from linguistic experience exhibit prototype effects.
"Prototypicality" refers to the well-known cognitive phenomenon that concep- tual categories are not homogenous; some members of a category are better ex- amples than others. Oranges, apples and bauanas are better examples of FRUIT than nuts and olives, which are nevertheless recognized as members of the same conceptual category (Rosch 1973 )8• TI1e "best examples" are the category's pro-
8 The participants in Rosch' experiment were US college students. It is highly likely that prototypicality effects wry with regional or cultural factors (e.g, Lipka 1987;
cf. discussion in Ungerer & Schmid J 996: 49-52).
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 129
totypical members; othermembtlrs vary to the degree to wl:ticll they have features in common vvith the prototype (cf. Wittgenstein 1953; Rosch 1973; Rosch and Mervis 1975). The usage-based conception oflanguage predicts that the more frequent, or: the more entrenched, contexts of use are the more prototypical members of a category, while the less frequently encountered usage contexts are more "peripheral" members belonging to the same category, related to the prototype by way of conceptual affu:tity. 9
We started this section with the question: How can we explain that language users maintain a more or less stable representation of the meaning of causal connectives, in view of the variation in usage-contexts encountered? Referriug to the usage-based theory oflanguage, \\'e may answer this quel>iion as follows.
On the basis of the Iiuguistic and non-linguistic contexts of use, language users will be able to recognize the PU and NPU of causal connectives as members of one and the same category. We hypothesize that NPU of causal connectives are motivated by the phenomenon of subjective construal based on the conceptual model of sul:>jectivity. Findings reported in previous studies that seem to favor our hypothesis, are: the fact that the c.onnectives' PU are relatively frequent, and observations on the conuectives' NPU reported in previous studies (and more particularly: our interpretation of them, see Section 2).
4. Corpus analysis
The usage-based perspective discussed in the previous section yields specific predictiorn concerning the patterns manifested within the variation of comlec- tives' contexts of use. In this section, we report a corpus analysis in which we investigate to what extent patterns of use found with daardom; daarorn and dus can he accounted for by the categorizatiou hypothesis, under the assumptiou that the "appearance" of the causality categories in language use is mediated by
9 Empirical evidence in favor of this effect of "token ftequency" is found for exam- ple in the phenomena of phonetic reduetion of high frequency words and phrases (cf. Bybee 2006, 2007), the "conserving effeet'' ~the finding that high-frequency sequences become more entrenched in their morphosyntaclic structure (e.g. Bybee 1985), and the "autonomy effecf' ~ tl1e fact that morphologically complex forms of high frequency can lose their internal structure as they become autonomous from etymologically related forms (Bybee 1985 ···· see discussion of these phenomena in
Bybee 2006; see for discussion of other types of frequency effects Hasher 1984;
Geeraerts, Grcndelaers & Bakema 1994; Verhagen 2000; Bybee 1985, 2007; Gold- berg 2005; Schmid 2000).
130 Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders and Arie fer hagen
prototypicality effects. In Sections 4.1 and 4.2 we present our hypotheses and methods of analysis. Section 4.3 presents the resnlts of our corpus analysis.
4.1. Hypothesis 1: Frequency of use as an indication for prototypicality of PU
Building on the "frequency of use reflects the cognitive entrenchment" assump- tion (section 3.2), our first- quantitative- hypothesis is: the connectives daar- door, daarom and dus are significantly more frequently used in usage types conforming to the categorization hypothesis (their PU).
Hypothesis 1:
Daardoor is prototypically used in content non-volitional relations;
daarom is prototypically used in content volitional relations; dus is pro- totypically used in epistemic relations.
Notice that this hypothesis reflects the "semasiological" perspective on word meaning. Given that a lexical items couple word forms to semantic contents, the semasiological question is: "Given linguistic item X, what meaning does it express?" This perspective is complemented by the "onomasiologial" perspec- tive on word meaning. The onomasiological question is: "Given concept Y, what linguistic item(s) can it be expressed with?" (Geeraerts 1997: 17). Although our present research question is primarily of a semasiological nature (PU ai\d NPU are inherently semasiological concepts), both of the levels of analysis are actually relevant for understanding how the meaning and use of causal con- nectives relate to conceptual structure. In the final analysis, we need to know what the connectives "mean" (denote in terms of conceptual reference - the semasiological perspective) and we need to know how (with what element or elements) an articnlate conceptual category can be expressed linguistically (the onomasiological perspective). We will return to this issue in the discussion.
4.1.1. Method and operationalization
In line with the usage-based assumptions presented in section 3, a usage con- text's degree ofprototypicality is operationalized in terms of usage-frequency:
the more frequent a specific context is, the more prototypical it is taken to be.
The categories of causal relations mentioned in the hypotheses will be deter- mined making use of the "basic operation paraphrase test" of Sanders ( 1997; cf.
Knott and Dale 1994). The paraphrase test makes it possible to determine the
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 131 relational meaning with elimination the connective's contribution to the overall interpretation of the relation.10
The categories are operationalized as "paraphrases" (see Figure 1), expli- cating the relational meaning they add to the connected segments. In doing so, the type of causal relation that relates the segments can be established in an objectified and reliable way. The paraphrases are adapted from Pander Maat and Sanders, 1995 (cf. Evers-Vermenl and Stukker 2003). The paraphrases repre- sent the connectives' hypothesized prototypical usage schemas on two aspects which have proven to be crucial for determining causality category ( cf. Section 2): SOC type (implicit speaker SOC, explicit [speaker or actor] SOC, no SOC) and event type in the consequent-segment (conclusion, volitional action, non- volitional situation). "S 1" refers to the segment containing the causal antecedent.
The paraphrase itself refers to segment "S2", containing the causal effect.
Relation category Paraphrase
Content non-volitional De situatie in S I leidt tot de volgende situatie: S2 The situation in Sl leads to the following situation: S2 Content volitional De situatie inS 1 is een motivatie voor de volgende handeling:
sz'"
The situation in SJ is a motivation for the following action:
S2
Epistemic De situatie in S 1 is een argument voor de volgende conclusie:
S2
The situation in SJ is an argument for the following conclu- sian: S2
Figure 1. Paraphrases of categories of causal relations marked by daarom, daardoor anddus.
The paraphrase test consists of three steps, which we will illustrate analyzing (13), a PU context of daarom, already discussed as fragment (7) and repeated here:
{13) (In Denmark and in the Netherlands, carcasses of cows older than 30 months are tested for the cattle plague BSE). Andere Ianden zijn n0g niet klaar om elk voor de slacht aangeboden rund te onderzoeken. Zij vernietigen daarom op grote schaal dieren.
10 Our analysis focuses on lexical elements (and sometimes contextual elements). Con- structional aspects are not taken into account. For hypotheses concerning construc- tional differences entailing differences in conceptual interpretation, see e.g. Evers- Vermeul (2005).
I 0 With S2 understood to be actually performed.
132 Ninke Stukker. Ted Sanders and Arie V,rhagen
'Other countries are not yet ready for testing any individual bovine destined for consumption. Daarom they destroy animals on a large scale.'
Step 1: Determine the text segments that are related by the connective.
[Andere Ianden zijn nag niet klaar om elk voor de slacht aangebo- den rund te onderzoeken.}Sl [Zij vernietigen daarom op grate schaal dieren.}S2
[Other countries are not yet ready for testing any individual bovine des- tined for consumption.]Sl Daarom [they destroy animals on a large scale]S2
Step 2: Remove the connective marking the causal relation.
/Andere Ianden zijn nog niet klaar om elk voor de slacht aangebode!!
rund te onderzoeken.}Sl [Zij vernietlgen op grote schaal dieren.}S2 [Other countries are not yet ready for testing any individual bovine destined for consnmption.]S 1 [They destroy animals on a large scale] S2 Step 3: Insert the paraphrases and determine which one fits the context uoder
consideration best.12
{Andere Ianden zijn nag niet klaar om elk voor de slacht aangeboden rund te onderzoeken.] Sl
[Other countries are not yet ready for testing any individnal bovine destined for consumption.]Sl
#13 The situation in Slleads to the following situation:
The situation in S 1 is a motivation for the following action:
#The situation in S 1 is an argument for the following conclusion:
[Zij vernietigen op grate schaal dieren.] S2 [They destroy animals on a large scale]S2
Since the connective's contribution to the interpretation of the relation as a whole is eliminated in this procedure (•iep 2), "PU-hood" or "NPU-hood" of a given context can he established as follows. If the paraphrase category coincides with the connective's hypothesized prototypical context of use, the fragment at hand is classified as PU. This is the case with (13), and also with (15) below, which is a typical PU ofdus (discussed in section2 as [8]). In fragment (14}, on 12 In orderto construct a maximally natural text, tense and aspect of the paraphrase may be adapted to the fragment. If necessary for a adequate interpretation, propositions may he reconstructed (write ont referential expressions, integrate relevant implicit information that can be deduced from the context).
13 The # symbol indicates !hat the suggested relation leads to an incoherent interpreta- tion,
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based ana~ysis 133 the other hand (discussed earlier as [9]), the paraphrase fitting bst (of volitional causality) does not coincide with the hypothesized PU of the marking connective
dus. Hence, ( 14) is classified as NPU.
(14) {"lk woon vlakbij, ]Sl
"['I live nearby;] Sl
# T11e situation in S t leads to the following situation:
Tire situation in S 1 is a motivation for the following action:
# The situation in S I is an argmnent for the following conclusion [lk ben brandwondencreme gaan halen." }S2
['I ran to get burn ointment.']S2"
(15) {Maar de huidige hypothese wijt de leukemieen aan een virus.JSI ['But the current hypothesis attributes the leukemias to a virus.']S 1
#The situation in S !leads to the following situation:
#The situation in St is a motivation for the following action The situation in S 1 is an argument for the following conclusion {Het is denkbaar dat de so/daten die nu leukemie hebben gekregen, slachtoffer zijn van iets anders dan verarmd uranium.]S2
['It is conceivable that the soldiers who suffer from leukemia now, are victims of something else than impoverished uranium.']S2
4.1.2. Sample and procedure
The frequency of use hypothesis is tested against a corpus of newspaper texts, taken from an electronic version of the Dutch national newspaper Trouw, from the year 2001.14 In order to control for possible genre-effects ( c£ Sanders 1997), the sample was built from genres belonging to different text types. For a more detailed description of the sample, seeAppendix I. Fromeachofthe sub cor- pora, 50 occurrences per connective were selected.15 Only forms functioning as markers of causal coherence relations were included, 16 and only relations hold- ing between segments of minimally one clause were included in the sample.
Occurrences were included in the sample in chronological order. The newspa-
14 Available from "Krantenbank" Factlane, (Lexis Nexis Nederland bv), a service that provides electronic access to the archives of a number of Dutch daily newspapers.
15 In order to minimize risks ofbia'i according to individual authors • styles and topic, maximally two occurrences per article were included in the corpus.
16 For an overview of other usage-types of daarom and dus, see Evers-Vermeul &
Stukker, 2003; Evers-Vermeul, 2005.
134 Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders andArie TJerhagen
pers were analyzed "issue by issue" (day by day).17 The sample was analyzed quantitatively making use of the statistical method of contrast analysis (see Appendix 2).
4.2. Hypothesis 2: Conceptual affinity ofNPU to the prototype as an indication of category membership
Our second hypothesis concerns the connectives' NPU, which are expected to occur less frequently (see hypothesis 1 ). The degree of (non-)typicality of usage contexts is operationalized quantitatively in terms of relative frequency of use (see hypothesis 1 ). Non-typical contexts can thus be defined as "contexts of use, defined in terms of causality category, occurring significantly less frequently than others". On the basis of the assumptions discussed in section 3, we expect that NPU are adequately analyzed as non-typical members of the same concep- tual category the connective's PU belong to. Our general expectations are that a) connectives' NPU can be analyzed as subjective coustruals of categorization, and b) the overall interpretation of NPU shows conceptual affinity to the resp.
connectives' PU. The following hypotheses, specified per connective, are tested:
Hypothesis 2:
Given a connective a which is prototypically used in category A, and which can non-prototypically be used in category B (C, D), the non- prototypical usage of a in B (C, D) is characterized by elements 'of category A more often than when category B (C, D) is marked with connective b (c, d).
4.2.1. Method and operationalization
Neither the speaker's subjective interpretation of a situation nor his rhetorical purposes are directly accessible for analysis. Therefore, subjective construals are reconstructed on the basis of the connectives' (linguistic or non-linguistic) contexts of use. It can only be hypothesized that non-typical usage types show conceptual affinity to the more typical usage types of a given connective; it can- not be known in advance what kind(s) of connection will occur; given the role of individual creativity it seems to be impossible in principle to predict all possible
17 Therefore, the distribution over text genres mirrors composition of the complete newspaper, rather than that proportional selection of all of the genres was strived at.
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 135 usage types of a given connective. Therefore, our analysis consists of identifying general tendencies in the usage of the connectives under investigation.
4.2.2. Sample and procedure
The primary causality category of an NPU was determined on the basis of the linguistic context, making use of the paraphrase test described in Section 4.1;
this step is performed when testing hypothesis 1. The analysis testing hypothesis 2, then, consists oflooking for demonstrable signs from the linguistic or extra- linguistic contexts of use - either within the segments connected in a causal relation, or in the broader context - which motivate the categorization of the specific causal relation as the causality type associated with the connective chosen.
4.3. Results
Our data largely reflect patterns found in previous corpus studies of daardoor, daarom and dus (Pander Maat and Sanders 1995, 2000; Pander Maat and Degand 2001).
4.3.1. Hypothesis 1: Usage frequency ofconnectives'PU
Our first hypothesis is corroborated by the connectives in our sample (Z
=
4 .30;p < .001; for a more detailed discussion of the statistical analysis see Ap- pendix I). Figure 2 presents an overview of the relation between connectives and causality categories in the corpus from a semasiological perspective ( cf.
section 4.1 ). When read vertically, it answers the question: "Given connective a (b, c), what category of causality does it typically express?". Our paraphrase method revealed that the connectives' PU contexts may )>e linguistically real- ized with different degrees of explicitness with respect to the categories they represent. In this section we discuss the most important of the PU patterns we encountered in our corpus.
Daardoor
In accordance with our PU hypothesis, we found that daardoor prototypically is used in contexts of content non-volitional causality (96/100 cases). Half of the cases in our sample consist of physical processes, such as fragment (16) (discussed in section 2 as [8]):
136 Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders and Arie Yerhagen
CausaJity categories in conn&etives
Figure 2. The relation between connectives and causality types in our sample. 17
(16) De Boeing 7 47, het duurste vliegtuig dat rondvliegt, daalt steeds sneller in waarde. De afgelopen jaren is hetvermogen van vliegmaatschappijen daardMr met vele miljarden dollars verminderd.
'The Boeing 747, the most expensive plane in the air, is continuing tO
diminish in value rapidly. Daardoor airlines' capital has decreased by millions of dollars over the last few years.'
The other balf of the non-volitional daardoor contexts concerned cansal processes with animate beings as a locus of effect, an example is (17).
(17) Magje een onderzoek van vorige week geloven, dan speelt in Amster- dam een derde van de kinderen tussen zeven en negen nooit buiten.·
[. .. J
Daardoor leren ze niet goed om te gaan met andere kinderen en dat is weer slecht voor later, als ze voorldurend nieuwe mensen leren kennen.'If you are to believe
a
study from last \veek, a third of the children in Amsterdam between the ages of seven and nine never play outside.Daardoor they do not learn to interact with other children: that bas a negative effect later on when they continue to meet new people.'
17 Two of dus' contexts of use and three of daarom's contexts of use in the sample were categorized as speech act causality. Because of the extremely low frequency, these cases were not further taken into account. For this reason, the sums total of daarom and dus in figure 3 do not add up to I 00. The speech act cases were discarded from statistical analysis. We did not discuss the category of speech act causality in the present psper for reasons of space. See for a discussion of speech act causality
Sanders et al., this volwne).
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 137
Despite anima~'}' of the locus of effect, (17) is not a case of volitional causal- ity; the paraphrase "The situation in SJ is a motivation for the following action:
S2" does not adequately reflect the purport of the relation. Since (17) reports on an investigation conducted by other persons than the writer of the fragment, categorization as an epistemic causal relation is not very likely either. This is reflected in the fact that the paraphrase for epistemic causality "The situation in Sf is an argument for the following conclusion: SZ" does not fit this context either. The paraphrase for non-volitional causality "The situation in Sl leads to the following situation: S2 " is the only one fitting this context adequately.
This ean be explained by the fact that "they" cannot be analyzed as a subject of consciousness. "Learn to interact with other children" is
a
mental process that can only take place in an animate being, but occurrence of the process is not dependent on the experiencer's intentions of doing so.Daardoor may also occur in non-volitional relations containing an action predicate in S2, as in fragment (18).
( 18) De schaatser Frans de Ronde omschreef de Jaap Edenbaan als een grote kattebak. "Overallag zand. Dao.rt/Qor schaatsten velen met bramen op hun ijzers. [ . .. ]".
'The skater Frans de Ronde defined the Jaap Eden rink as a big kitty litter bin. ''There was sand everywhere. Daardoor many skaters skated with scratches on their blades."'
Interestingly, in spite of the presence of the inherently volitional action in
the consequence segment, the paraphrase of volitional causal relations "The situation in Sl was a motivation for the following action: S2" does not fit very well. The adequate interpretation of this relation is not that the fact that "sand was all over the skating rink" led to the volitional action of "skating of many", but that the situation depicted in S 1 led to the unvolitional situation of "many skaters skating with scratches on their blades".
Note that the deviant instantiations of daardoor's PU non-volitional causality we discuss here, and other connectives' PU we discuss in this section, are not to be classified as NPU. The reconstructions indicate that classification in accordance with the connective's PU causality type yields the most plausible interpretation.
Daarom
As noted in previous studies ( cf: Pander Maat and Sanders 2000; Pander Maat and Degand 2001), daarom is the most "generalist" of dte three connectives analyzed in this study. It is the only connective that is conventionally used in all of the categories disfinguished Still, in accordance 1Nith our PU hypothesis,
138 Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders and Arie Verhagen
daarom has a statistically significant preference for volitional causal relations (50/100). The majority of these contexts contain an overtly expressed action iu S2. An example of this pattern is (19), discussed in section 2 as (9).
(19) (In Denmark and in the Netherlands, carcasses of cows older than 30 months are tested for the cattle plague BSE). Andere Ianden zijn nog niet klaar om elk voor de slacht aangeboden rnnd te onderzoeken. Zij vemietigen daarom op grate schaal dieren.
'Other countries are not yet ready for testing any individual bovine destined for consumption. Daarom they destroy animals on a large scale.'
However, volitionality of the causal relation need not be explicitly specified with an action predicate. The paraphrase test identified volitional causal relations without overtly expressed actor SOC's. As an example, consider (20), in which the inherent volitionality of the causal relation is "hidden" in an agentless passive construction.
(20) Toen Napoleon ook Holland in bezit kreeg, was de vaart ineens niet meer nodig. De Noordervaart is daarom nooit verder gegraven dan tot Beringe.
'Once Napoleon controlled Holland as well, the waterway was no longer necessary. Daarom the Great Northern Canal was never dug any further than Beringe.'
Some contexts in our sample even contained state predicates which appeared to be relevant in the interpretation of the relation as "result of an action". These·
cases were analyzed as volitional causal relations. An example is (21 ).
(21) Microsoft-oprichter Bill Gates waagde zichzelf als eerste aan het spel tijdens een computerbeurs in gokparadijs Las Jlegas. "Wlj wilden iets bouwen dat een doorbraak voor computerfreaks is '', omschrijft de · voormalige topman Microsofts ambities. Het zwart gekleurde apparaat heeft daarom vier aansluitingen voor besturingsknuppels meegekre- gen, waar de gangbare "gameboys " er maar twee hebben.
'Microsoft's founder Bill Gates was the first to try the game during a computer conference in gambler's paradise Las Vegas. "We wanted to build something that would be a breakthrough for computer freaks"
explains Microsoft's ex- top executive. Daarom the black colored ma- chine has been provided with four conoections for game pads, while the current "gameboys" have ouly two.'
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 139 The perfect heeft meegekregen in (21) (literally: 'has received') suggests an act of transfer, including an volitional actor (hence the translation 'has been provided with'). Thus both in (20) and in (21), the paraphrase for volitional causal relations, "The situation in SJ was a motivation for the following action:
S2 " is the only one that fits these contexts adequately.
Dus
Dus is prototypically used in the category of epistemic causality (761100). This is in accordance with our PU hypothesis. A typical example of this category is (22), discussed in section 2 as (10).
(22) (Dutch soldiers who served in Bosnia relate the higb incidence of leukemia among them to frequent exposure to impoverished uranium).
Maar de huidige hypothese wijt de leukemieiin aan een virus ( .. ).
Het is dus denkbaar dat de so/daten die nu leukemie hebben gekregen, slachtoffer zi}n van iets anders dan verarmd uranium.
'But the current hypothesis attributes the leukemias to a virus. ( ... ) Dus it is conceivable that the soldiers who suffer from leukemia now, are victims of something else than impoverished urauium.'
Epistemic causal relations are, in a large majority of cases, easily recognized by way of subjective elements (signs of "self-expression" of a SOC: evaluations, modal elements, etc., cf. Langacker 1990; J. Sanders and Spooren 1997; Pit 2003). But sometimes, the intended epistemic interpretation is linguistically
"underspecified". Yet, the paraphrase of epistemic causality "The situation in Sl is an argument for the following conclusion: S2" is the only one that fits these contexts adequately. An example is (23).
(23) (A "pavese" is a weapon shield) Twee eeuwen lang, tussen 1300 and 1500, zijn paveses overal in Europa in gebrnik geweest, dus ook in Nederlandse legers.
'During two centuries, between 1300 and 1500, paveses were used everywhere in Europe, dus in Dutch armies as well.'
Underspecified epistemic causal relations concern almost without excep- tion instances of "noncausal epistemic relations" in which either the real-world causality has a different direction than the epistemic one (so-called "abductive"
causality19), or real world causality is not relevant at all, as in the case of (23), 19 An example from our corpus is "Dan moet je eerst uitvinden van welk station je vertrekt. Rouaan ligt ten westen van Parijs. Dus het Noordstation, waar je in de
140 Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders and Arie ferhagen
an instance of assumption based reasoning ( cf. Pander Maat and Degand 2001:
221-224). Noncausal epistemic relations can be identified making use of the paraphrase test.
A non-standard lingnistic construal of an epistemic causal relation is (24).
Judging from form characteristics, the relation between S 1 and S2 can be interpreted both as a motivation for the (genuine) question "why shouldn't Braakhekke sing on stage?" (in which case it should have been categorized as speech act causality, cf. Sweetser 1990; see also Sanders et al. this volume), and as giving an argument for the conclusion that is formulated as a rhetorical question "Braakhekke should sing on stage as well", which leads to catego- rization as an epistemic causal relation. The latter interpretation seems to be the more adequate one in this context, where the cook justifies his involvement with theatre. This is corroborated by the fact that the paraphrase for epistemic causality "The situation in SJ is an argument for the following conclusion: S2"
adequately reflects the purport of the relation in (24).
(24) (Television chef Braakhekke also appears on stage these days) Is Braakhekke wellicht een aandachtsjunk, wil de interviewer weten.
"Neeeee ", kaatst de lange uithaal tot over het Leidseplein. Braakhekke
"likt aileen graag aan het theater en zingt altijd onder het koken, dus:
waarom niet op het toneel?"
'The interviewer wonders whether Braakhekke is perhaps an atten- tion junkie?, "Noooo", resounds his answer across the Leidseplein.
Braakhekke "only likes to lick the theatre and sings while he is cook- ing, dus: Why not on stage?"'
Conclusion from the PU analysis
On the basis of the "frequency reflects entrenchment assumption", then, we interpret the results of our PU analysis as an indication that the usage contexts conforming to the categorization hypothesis are more entrenched in the language user's semantic knowledge than the usage contexts which do not conform to the categorization hypothesis.
buurt Belgische frieten kunt kopen?" Then first you have to find out from which station you'll be leaving. Rauen lies west of Paris. "Dus "the North station, in which surroundings you can buy Belgien fries?
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 141 4.3.2. Hypothesis 2: Conceptual affinity of connectives' NPU to
their PU
Our second hypothesis concerns the non-typical contexts of use (NPU) of daar- door, daarom and dus. We hypothesized (section 4.2) that the connectives'NPU reflect characteristics of their PU, to such an extent that the NPU can be analyzed as peripheral members from the same semantic category the connectives' PU belong to. In this section, we describe NPU patterns we found in our sample.
Per pattern we discuss one representative example. We describe in what way the NPU is conceptually related to the connective's PU, and also how the NPU pattern diverges from the same causality category marked with one of the other cmmectives.
Daardoor
Daardoor is typically used to mark non-volitional causal relations (see sec- tion 4.3.1 ). In a small minority of cases in our sample ( 4/100), it is used to mark volitional causal relations. An example is (25):
(25) De Chinezen krijgen dit jaar vee[ meer vrije dagen. De regering hoopt dat de bevolking daardoor meer spaargeld gaat uitgeven om de groei van de economie op peil te houden.
'The Chinese get more vacation days this year. The government hopes that daardoor the populace will spend more of its savings to keep the economy growing.'
The causal relation in (25) is constructed between the first sentence the complement clause of the second sentence. The fragment is taken from an article which discusses a characteristic of the economic climate in China, namely that the Chinese people tend to save all their money instead of spending it and thus stimulate economic activity. The causal relation in (25) is best explicated with the paraphrase for voliti<,mal causality, "The situation in SJ is a motivation for the following action: S2 ". The paraphrase for non-volitional causality, "The situation in SJ leads to the following situation: S2" doesn't seem to reflect the purport of (25) adequately.
However, in accordance with our second hypothesis, daardoor-marked vo- litional causal contexts systematically exhibit conceptual affinity to daardoor's PU on the aspect of the relation's "locus of effect". They differ from daarom and dus marked volitional contexts with respect to degree of intentionality of this locus of effect.
142 Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders and Arie Verhagen
In the case of (25), the locus of effect "the populace", is ambiguous with respect to SOC-hood. On the one hand, the predicate "spend" in S2 is inherently intentional. On these grounds, we would have to interpret (25) as containing an actor SOC. On the other hand, "spend" is presented as instantiating systematic patterns. The measure of allotting the people more holidays is prompted by an (assumed) social law: "holidays are spent shopping" or "the more time off, the more shopping is done". A linguistic indication in favor of this non-volitional interpretation is that the causal relation is strongly presented from the perspective of Chinese government. Although a "normal" intentional causal interpretation of the situation reported is certainly conceivable on a conceptual level (Chioese people consider more holidays a reason for going shopping more frequently), the present wording favors an interpretation from the perspective of the government.
The first indication of this is the embedding of the cause-segment in a matrix sentence that conveys a mental state of the government. The next indication is located in the second part of the effect-segment, a goal presented internally in the sentence, namely, the action of spending. It is improbable that "to keep the economy growing" specifies the goal that "the populace" has for "spending", as the construction of the sentence suggests. Most probably, this element should be understood as a motivation for introducing the measure from the perspective of the government. This is possibly why the volitional causal paraphrase "The situation in Sl is a motivation for the follawing action: S2" fits this context well, while at the same time the intentions of the aetna! intentional agents are not very relevant in interpreting the situation.
Similar elements indicating "restricted intentionality" can be identified in the other volitional contexts from daardoor, but they are absent in any of !he daarom- or dus-marked volitional relations (see table I; cf. the examples of volitional daarom discussed in section 4.3.1 and the volitional dus example in [31] discussed below). Although the effect-denoting segments of the daardoor- marked cases contain an action predicate and an animate locus of effect, these are not to be construed as a genuinely intentionally acting "SOC''s ( cf. Section 2).
It is highly "unlikely that the loci of effect in these cases consciously interpreted the situation presented in the cause-segment as a valid reason for performing the action depicted in the effect-segment; their "intentionality'' seems to be of a restricted kind. These observations indicate that daardoor-marked cases show a conceptual relatedness to daardoor's PU, non-volitional causal relations, where human intentionality does not play a relevant role.20
20 Note that fragment (25), just like the three other volitional contexts of daardoor, differ from daardoor-marked fragments with "non-volitional action predicates", one ofthe patterns instantiating daardoor's PU ( cf. [18], discussed in section 4.3.1 ).
In the latter case, ambiguity of the intentional aspect in the relation is solved at
Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: a usage-based analysis 143 Table 1. Intentionality in content volitional causal relations
Restricted intentionality Full intentionality Total
Daardoor 4 0 4
Daarom 0 50 50
Dus 0 22 22
Total 4 72 76
Daarom
Daarom occurs in NPU contexts more frequently than daardoor and dus do. It is also the only connective that has NPU in two different causality types, namely non-volitional causality (16/100) and epistemic causality (311100). We start our discussion with the latter type, an example is (26).
(26) (Selecting tall players for volleyball increases chances of international success) "Nederland heet een langvolk te zijn, maar via de clubs vinden we de lange talenten niet. Ze !open we[ op straat rand; vaak geftus- treerd al vroeg met sport gestopt, omdat hun motoriek tijdens de eerste puberjaren achterloopt bij die van ldeinere leefiijdsgenootjes. Daarom moeten wij zelf naar de scholen gaan om ze te vinden en om ze te over- tuigen dat ze juist door volleybal meer eigenwaarde kunnen krijgen."
"'The Dutch are supposed to be a tall people, but we can't find the tall talents through the clubs. They're walking around on the streets; often already long frustrated and having given up the sport, because their motor skills are not that of their smaller peers when they're teenagers.
Daarom we have to go to schools ourselves to find them and convince them they'd be greatly appreciated in volleyball."'
Fragment (26) contains an intentional action predicate in S2, but this pred- icate is embedded under a modal verb. Therefore, the paraphrase for volitional causality, which is daarom's PU, "The situation in Sl is a motivation for the following action: S2" does not fit this context adequately. The paraphrase for epistemic causality ''The situation in Sl is an argument for the following con- clusion: S2 " by contrast, does. Epistemic causality is distinguished from other types by its inherent high degree of speaker involvement. The source of the causal
the segmental level (see discussion in 4.3.1 ), while ambiguity of intentionality in volitional relations with daardoor, such as (25), occurs at the relational level.
