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Causal connectives in the history of English

Causal connectives in the history of English. Elly van Gelderen GLAC, May 2019. Outline. Where do causal connectives come from? Some examples: for, since, because Structural changes Integration: Central - Peripheral Iconicity and sequence. Causality. Innate

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Causal connectives in the history of English

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  1. Causal connectives in the history of English Elly van Gelderen GLAC, May 2019

  2. Outline Where do causal connectives come from? Some examples: for, since, because Structural changes Integration: Central - Peripheral Iconicity and sequence

  3. Causality Innate Pre-linguistic children relate cause and effect (Leslie & Keeble 1987). Grammaticalization: time > cause Abraham 1976; Heine et al. 1991 Sweetser 1990 Traugott & König 1991 on since

  4. Three causal Cs (1) for a. space > purpose b. time > cause (content + epistemic + SA) (2) since time > cause (content + epistemic + speech act) (3) because cause (content + epistemic + SA)

  5. There are other causal Cs Now that you know … (Louviot 2018); as; in that; consequently after could be but isn’t: (1) After we heard the lecture we felt greatly inspired (Traugott & König 1991: 194) The reason (T&K) is past vs non-past or state: (2) Since Susan left him John has been very miserable (temporal or causal) (3) Since you are so angry, there is no point … (causal only)

  6. Sweetser’s Content, epistemic, speech act (1) John came back, because he loved her. (2) John loved her, because he came back. (3) What are you doing tonight, because there’s a good movie on. This is also connected to integration (Quirk et al’s adjunct-disjunct) and sequencing. Stenström (1998) has useful criteria (clefting, answer to wh). Cf. Haegeman.

  7. Currently in COHA

  8. Examples with for: see handout A P use of space, time, purpose, cause Finite for vs non-finite for PPs are frequently preposed They are content/central but relatively unintegrated; also insubordinate. Not iconic

  9. Examples with since: handout B Siððan < sið and ðam (Skeat 1892: 430) only C in OE, temporal and causal (Traugott & König 195, after Mitchell), first content then epistemic Finite because of the temporal connection Central and integrated (V-last and causing V2) No clear iconicity New cycle of P in ME: nominalized N?

  10. Examples with because: handout C Starts as insubordinate/unintegrated But integrated/central by late C14 Currently, both central and peripheral Also complex P by late C14

  11. Features Feature Economy Minimize the semantic and interpretable features in the derivation, e.g: VP-Adverbial CP-Adverbial C-Head semantic > [iF] > [uF] Finite causative vs non-finite purposive: Time – space (in front)

  12. Structural change CP > CP PP C’ PP C’ for X C TP for X C TP [cause] …. PP (that) …

  13. Insubordinate > subordinate? Traugott (2017): early on subordinate. (Higashiizumi (2006) suggests the opposite). With because, insubordinateseems to be earlier. What happens with because + since > P

  14. High/low position Lakoff (1965, but adapted sentence; Sweetser; Haegeman; etc): (1) He didn’t leave because she arrived [he either left or not] (2) He didn’t leave since his coat is still there. [he didn’t leave] For- and since-clauses: start low, as central adverbial Because- clause: different

  15. Iconicity (for time); sequence Ford (1993): causal clauses follow main clause in spoken Diessel (2005): the same but academic has 27% initial (mainly since/as). For: initially, they mainly follow Since: both Because: both

  16. References Charnavel, Isabelle 2018. Perspectives in Causal Clauses. NLLT. Dam, Johannes van 1957. The Causal Clause and Causal Prepositions in Early Old English Prose. Groningen: Wolters. Diessel, Holger 2005. Competing motivations for the ordering of main and adverbial clauses. Linguistics 43: 449-470. Esseesy, Mohssen 2010. Grammaticalization of Arabic Prepositions and Subordinators. Leiden: Brill. Ford, Cecilia 1993. Grammar in Interaction. CUP.

  17. Higashiizumi, Yuko 2006. From a subordinate clause to an independent clause. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo Publishing. Louviot, Elise 2018. Pragmatic uses of nu in Old Saxon and Old English. In Sylvie Hancil, et al. (eds), New Trends in Grammaticalization and Language Change, 259-290. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Skeat, Walter 1892. Principles of English Etymology. Oxford: Clarendon. Sweetser, Eve 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. CUP. Traugott, Elizabeth 2017. Insubordination’ in the light of the Uniformitarian Principle. English Language and Linguistics 21.2: 289–310.

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