Causalidade e aspectos cognitivos de sua codificação: os conectores causais da língua alemã

Abstract

This master thesis introduces and develops concepts from Cognitive Linguistics to investigate the cognitive aspects of the encoding of causal relations introduced by the following sentence connectors in German: da, denn and weil. Therefore, this work took the theoretical and methodological apparatus developed by Pander Maat & Degand (2001), which conceive causality not as one single relation, but as a gradual category that encompasses different levels of connection. Thus, two basic research activities were established. Firstly, the literature survey of the theory around different approaches to the issue of causality that formed the basis for the discussion entertained in the first and second chapter. Secondly, the empirical analysis of occurrences of each of the connectors employed the methods developed by Pander Maat & Degand (2001) in order to replicate their study and thus to investigate how the gradient of causal relations might contribute to the study of causality in the German language. By opposing the approaches developed in the formalist and functionalist traditions of linguistic analysis, this study sought to argue that the proper investigation of phenomena related to causality are developed in the scope of Cognitive Linguistics and, in the specific case of this research, the theoretical apparatus of Cognitive Grammar, by Langacker (1987, 1991, 2008), since it comes to research involving aspects of grammatical encoding of causality. On a second phase, the theoretical discussion set up the foundation for the research of causality in the scope of Cognitive Grammar. It was argued that three basic components are needed to the successful study of causality: a conceptual base on which the essential parameters of the causal experience are defined, a subject of consciousness, i.e., a conceptualizer capable of establishing causal relations, and set of construal operations which determine the forms of access to the conceptual base. The interaction between these three components determines the different relational categories that comprise the causal gradient. They are: nonvolitional causality, volitional causality, epistemic causal relations, noncausal epistemic relations, relations between speech acts I (motivation) and relations between speech acts II (paraphrase). The empirical research was developed by means of a paraphrase test, which was proposed by the authors of the original study. Paraphrases were adapted to serve the German language and its peculiarities. The paraphrase test shown that the connectors da and weil compete under the voluntary causal relationships. Causal epistemic relations are encoded by all three connectors and their uses differ due to several possible organizations in the information structure and the communicative management strategies they mobilize in their usage events. The noncausal epistemic relations are only introduced by the denn. Moreover, denn also introduces relations between speech acts (motivation). The relations of the both ends of the gradient (nonvolitional causality and paraphrase of speech acts) are not encoded by means of the connectors analyzed. Key-words: Cognitive Semantics; sentence connectives; causality; subjectivity.