Direct causation in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events

Abstract

This research proposes a new theory of direct causation and examines how this concept plays a key role in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events. According to the no-intervening-cause hypothesis, a causal chain can be described by a single-clause sentence and construed as a single event if there are no intervening causers between the initial causer and the final causee. Consistent with this hypothesis, participants used single-clause sentences (lexical causatives) more often than two-clause sentences (e.g. periphrastic causatives) for causal chains in which (1) the causer and causee touched (Experiments 1 and 2), and (2) an intervening entity could be construed as an enabling condition rather than another cause (Experiments 2–4). In addition, event judgments paralleled linguistic descriptions: chains that could be described with single-clause expressions were more often construed as single events than chains that could not (Experiments 1–3). Implications for languages other than English, for the linguistic coding of accidental outcomes and for the relationship between cognition and language in general are discussed.