Causal relations on a cline of explicitness: an SFL perspective

Waleed Othman

doi:10.1186/s40554-020-00071-2

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to categorize cause-effect relations in English in terms of explicitness on the basis of realisation and choice. Specifically, making use of SFL’s concept of grammatical metaphor and the dimension of delicacy, I suggest that cause-effect relations can be placed on a cline with respect to how explicitly they encode logico-semantic meaning.

Highlights

The concept of causality has been subject to studies in numerous fields, such as philosophy, science, and linguistics
In cognitive linguistics, where causality relations have received abundant attention, the concept is defined as a psychological tool of humans to understand the word independently of language, and it is one of the principles involved in the construction of the human mental model of reality (Neeleman and van de Koot 2012)
Relevant about SFL’s treatment of causal relations is their general classification in terms of the domain of realisation, which helps avoid restricting the representation of causal meaning to specific linguistic features, such as verbal markers of cause and effect

Summary

Introduction

The concept of causality has been subject to studies in numerous fields, such as philosophy, science, and linguistics. In SFL, causal relations can be markedly and un-markedly realised experientially (in clause simplexes), logically (in clause complexes), and textually (in cohesive sequences). These three domains of realisation are illustrated . In SFL, anything that can be construed as part of human experience is a phenomenon This is the most general experiential (semantic) category, of which there are three orders of complexity (cf Halliday and Matthiessen 1999). Other mappings are possible; sequences, figures and elements as semantic resources for construing experience may be realised incongruently (metaphorically). A given semantics can be grammaticalised in ways other than the

Process verbal group

Delicacy Clause simplex congruency congruency congruency

Delicacy Clause complex congruency congruency congruency