Abstract
In English there are a variety of causal adjunct phrases such asbecause of,as a result of,on account ofandin spite of.It was reported recently that a new structurebecause Xis thriving in colloquial registers including conversations and blogs. The complementXis not only restricted to nominals but also includes other lexical categories such as adjectives, adverbs and even verbs. This article delves into the history of this usage and its reasoning, and conducts a survey on other causal adjuncts to determine whether the same kind of innovation is observed with other adjunct phrases. The survey shows that the new usage started from NP complements and has been extended to include complements of other lexical categories, and that the new usage attested inbecause Xis also observed within case X. The truncation of the final preposition is verified with all the adjunct phrases in the survey, but the category of the complement is basically restricted to nominals in the case of other phrases. We will look into the factors segregating the two groups of adjuncts, namelybecause/in case X, and other causal adjuncts.
Highlights
In English, there are a variety of causal adjunct phrases such as because of, as a result of, on account of, owing to and in spite of
I delve into the reasoning behind the innovative use of this causal expression, which, dates to at least the seventeenth century; a survey has been conducted on other causal adjuncts to determine whether the same kind of innovation can be observed with regard to them
The Global Web-based English (GloWbE) (1.9 billion words) consists of data gathered in December 2012 from the web pages of twenty countries, and about 60 percent of the data came from blogs
Summary
In English, there are a variety of causal adjunct phrases such as because of, as a result of, on account of, owing to and in spite of. The truncation of the final preposition is demonstrated in all the adjunct phrases in the survey, yet the category of the complement is essentially restricted to nominals and gerunds in the case of other causal phrases.
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