Abstract
AbstractLanguage users have preferences for the connectives they choose to express causal relations. These choices may depend on the subjectivity involved in the relation. Dutch connectives illustrate this situation clearly:want(‘since/for’) is preferred typically for expressing subjective relations andomdat(‘because’) for objective ones. While various corpus-based studies have revealed a similar pattern in other languages, little attention has been paid to Spanish from this perspective. Recent corpus-based studies analyzed the connectivesporque(‘because’),ya que(‘since’) andpuesto que(‘given that’) using two different methods of analysis. Surprisingly, the findings did not coincide with the previous literature on Spanish connectives, and the semantic profile of such connectives in terms of subjectivity remained unclear. The current study again aims to investigate whether these connectives show systematic variation in terms of subjectivity, using crowdsourcing experimentation. Results show that Spanish native speakers preferpuesto queoverporqueto express subjective relations. However, no statistically significant difference was observed betweenporqueandya que. This study offers a better understanding of Spanish connectives in terms of subjectivity. Furthermore, it contributes to the assessment of the use of crowdsourcing as a useful and reliable method to elucidate the meaning and use of connectives.
Highlights
IntroductionHuman language provides its speakers with linguistic means to express these notions
Fundamental notions in human cognition can be expressed at the level of discourse
Two crowdsourcing experiments are implemented to answer the following research question: Do Spanish connectives show a systematic variation in terms of subjectivity in an analysis of native speakers’ preferences for causal constructions? Based on the literature, our hypotheses are that porque is a general connective used to express both objective and subjective relations, whereas ya que and puesto que are specific connectives used mainly to express subjective relations
Summary
Human language provides its speakers with linguistic means to express these notions Connectives such as because, since and so are good examples of these means; they express causality, they signal that a causal relation can be established between two discourse segments. Another important notion expressed in discourse is subjectivity This is a cognitive principle that allows us to distinguish, among other things, between objective and subjective causal relations, depending on the presence of a Subject of Consciousness (SoC). This SoC is responsible for the causal relation constructed between two or more discourse segments (Pander Maat and Sanders 2001).
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