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Micro- and Macro-variation of Causal Clauses: Synchronic and Diachronic Insights
Edited by Łukasz Jędrzejowski and Constanze Fleczoreck
[Studies in Language Companion Series 231] 2023
► pp. 167–183

Chapter 6
Expressing non-volitional causality in English

| Radboud University Nijmegen
| Saarland University

English because is assumed to be polysemous in that it can be used to mark causal relations in all domains. The current study examines this claim and explores the suitability of because to mark non-volitional content relations. In a parallel corpus study, we investigate how causal relations translated into Dutch using doordat (prototypically marking non-volitional causal relations), omdat (marking content relations), and want (marking epistemic and speech act relations) were originally expressed in English. The results show that while omdat and want are indeed typically translations of because in English, non-volitional doordat is not. A qualitative analysis reveals that non-volitional causality is more often expressed in English in a single discourse unit or using a connective restricted to the content domain. These findings have important consequences for the presumed domain generality of English because and call for a reconsideration of English translation recommendations for doordat.

Keywords: volitionality, causality, coherence relations, parallel corpus
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method: parallel corpus study
    • 2.1Corpus data
    • 2.2Annotating the English source text equivalents of doordat
    • 2.3Annotation procedure
    • 2.4Data analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Quantitative analysis: because as source text equivalent of doordat, omdat, and want
    • 3.2Qualitative analysis: source text equivalents of doordat
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.231.06hoe
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