Chapter 10
Subjectivity and Causality in discourse and cognition
Evidence from corpus analyses, acquisition and
processing
Cognitively oriented linguists have various
linguistic resources at their disposal, and therefore need to
develop methodological strategies of when to use which method. This
chapter illustrates the benefits of using converging evidence. We
review research results from several methodologies, including the
use of corpus-based, acquisition and processing data, in order to
illustrate what kinds of insights this brings at the level of
discourse. The results suggest that Causality and Subjectivity are
two basic cognitive notions that organize our knowledge of coherence
relations. They help us explain the system and use of causal
relations and their linguistic expressions in everyday language use,
and they account for discourse processing and representation, as
well as the acquisition order of connectives.
Article outline
- 1.Discourse, coherence and subjectivity
- 2.Subjectivity in written language use
- 2.1How Subjectivity defines categories of Dutch causal
connectives
- 2.2How Subjectivity is relevant cross-linguistically
- 3.Subjectivity in other types of language use
- 3.1Connectives in corpora of language use
- 3.2Subjectivity in spoken language
- 4.Subjectivity in the processing of coherence relations
- 5.Subjectivity in language development
- 6.Conclusion and future developments
-
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