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Part of
Empirical Studies of the Construction of Discourse
Edited by Óscar Loureda, Inés Recio Fernández, Laura Nadal and Adriana Cruz
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 305] 2019
► pp. 131–150

Chapter 5
Causal relations between discourse and grammar

Because in spoken French and Dutch

| University of Louvain

The chapter presents a cross-linguistic study of the subordinating conjunctions parce que in French and omdat in Dutch (both corresponding to English because) at the interface between discourse and grammar. It is argued that causal subordinate conjunctions do not always mark a causal relation at the discourse level, because they do not always link two independent utterances or speech-acts. Such subordinating conjunctions, however, can gain discourse status, when they are used paratactically; as may be witnessed from accompanying discourse behavior such as co-occurring discourse markers, filled pauses, declination reset, etc. Thus, the aim of this study is to gain deeper insight into the discursive consequences of the grammatical options of coordination and subordination.

Keywords: subordination, Dutch, French, causality, discourse markers, grammar, discourse, corpus analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Causal connectives, subjectivity and discourse
  • 3. Parce que in grammar and discourse
    • 3.1Microsyntactic and macrosyntactic parce que
    • 3.2Conjunctive and DM parce que in discourse
      • 3.2.1 Parce que : Prosodic patterns
      • 3.2.2 Parce que : Disfluencies and production phenomena
      • 3.2.3 Parce que and co-referential chains
      • 3.2.4 Parce que and turn management
    • 3.3 Parce que : Preliminary conclusion
  • 4.V2-omdat in (spontaneous) spoken Dutch
    • 4.1The syntactic status of V2-omdat
    • 4.2The semantic status of V2-omdat
    • 4.3The discourse status of V2-omdat
    • 4.4Preliminary conclusion on omdat
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.305.05deg
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