Causal Constructions in the World's Languages
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RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Institute for Linguistic Studies CAUSAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN THE WORLD’S LANGUAGES (synchrony, diachrony, typology) Book of Abstracts ——— St. Petersburg, January 28–30, 2021 St. Petersburg 2020 РОССИЙСКАЯ АКАДЕМИЯ НАУК Институт лингвистических исследований ПРИЧИННЫЕ КОНСТРУКЦИИ В ЯЗЫКАХ МИРА (синхрония, диахрония, типология) Материалы международной конференции ——— Санкт-Петербург 28–30 января 2021 г. Санкт-Петербург 2020 УДК 81 ББК 81.2 П-776 Проведение конференции и подготовка к печати сборника материалов осуществлены в рамках проекта «Причинные конструкции в языках мира: семантика и типология», поддержанного грантом Российского научного фонда (№ 18-18-00472) Утверждено к печати Ученым советом ИЛИ РАН Рецензенты: д.ф.н. А. Ю. Русаков, к.ф.н. В. А. Стегний Причинные конструкции в языках мира (синхрония, диахрония, типо- логия). Материалы международной конференции (Санкт-Петербург, 28–30 января 2021 г.) / Сост. Н. М. Заика, С. Б. Клименко, О. В. Кузне- цова, М. Л. Федотов. СПб.: ИЛИ РАН, 2020. — 145 стр. doi: 10.30842/9785604483817 © Коллектив авторов, 2020 ISBN 978-5-6044838-1-7 © ИЛИ РАН, 2020 © Редакционно-издательское оформление. ИЛИ РАН, 2020 Bernd Kortmann, Alice Blumenthal-Dramé University of Freiburg, Germany CAUSAL MARKERS — TYPOLOGY, DIALECTOLOGY, PROCESSING The three directions from which causal markers will be investi- gated in this paper represent three extremely fruitful and mutually en- riching approaches to the study of the morphology, syntax and seman- tics of adverbial subordinators and adverbial constructions (like converbs, adverbial participles), in general (cf. e.g. [König, Siemund 2000; Kortmann 1995, 1997]). The first part of the talk will be concerned with typological and dialectological perspectives on causal markers. It will offer a range of generalizations concerning form-function relationships of causal markers in synchrony and diachrony, typical grammaticalization paths, and to what extent the analyses of cross-linguistic variation and large-scale cross-dialectal variation within a single language can com- plement and enrich each other. The language for which large-scale in- tra-linguistic variation has been investigated is English, the relevant database (eWAVE) covering 50 L1 and L2 varieties of English worldwide and 26 English-based Pidgins and Creoles [Kortmann, Lunkenheimer 2012; Kortmann et al. 2020]. The second part of the talk addresses the processing of causal markers and discourse relations against the background of typology- based hypotheses on cognitive differences between causal and conces- sive markers and discourse relations, such that concession is less in- ferable and thus cognitively inherently more complex than causality (H1). The typological observations leading to such hypotheses promi- nently include the following: (i) concessive relations generally tend to be marked overtly, whereas causal relations are more often left im- plicit; moreover, compared to causal connectives, concessive connec- tives tend to be (ii) morphologically more complex, (iii) acquired later in ontogeny, tend to (iv) emerge later in diachrony, and (v) do not Bernd Kortmann, Alice Blumenthal-Dramé give rise to online interpretative augmentation or (vi) to diachronic semantic change (e.g. [König, Siemund 2000; Kortmann 1997]. But, independently, there has also been formulated the so-called ‘causality- by-default hypothesis,’ which states that causality is a default assump- tion (H2). These (H1, H2) and related cognitive hypotheses will be put to test in three experimental studies (self-paced reading, rapid serial visual presentation, EEG) with native English and native German in- formants (following experimental designs as in, e.g., [Xiang, Kuper- berg 2015] or [Xu, Jiang, Zhou 2015]). The overarching story we want to tell in this second part is (a) how via experimental studies one can successfully put to test typology- based hypotheses on (relative) cognitive complexity and cognitive processes, and (b) how c o n t r a s t i v e experimental studies may re- lativize the corresponding studies conducted with native speaker in- formants from just a single language, in the sense that the degree to which typological hypotheses on cognition can be shown to apply in an individual language depends (in a predictable way) on its typologi- cal make-up. For example, the contrastive study with English and German informants confirms that causal connections between clauses are more expected than concessive connections. However, the ten- dency to take causality for granted is significantly more pronounced in native speakers of English than in native speakers of German. Why that is, and why from a typological perspective this is not surprising, will be discussed towards the end of our talk. References König, Siemund 2000 — E. König, P. Siemund. Causal and concessive clauses: Formal and semantic relations // E. Couper-Kuhlen, B. Kortmann (eds.). Cause — Condition — Concession — Contrast. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000. P. 341–360. Kortmann 1995 — B. Kortmann. Adverbial participial clauses in English // M. Haspelmath, E. König (eds.). Converbs in Cross-Linguistic Perspec- tive. Structure and Meaning in Adverbial Verb Forms — Adverbial Parti- ciples, Gerunds. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995. P. 189–237. Kortmann 1997 — B. Kortmann. Adverbial Subordination: A Typology and History of Adverbial Subordinators Based on European Languages. Ber- lin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. 6 Causal markers — typology, dialectology, processing Kortmann, Lunkenheimer (eds.) 2012 — B. Kortmann, K. Lunkenheimer (eds.). The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012. Kortmann et al. 2020 — B. Kortmann, K. Lunkenheimer, K. Ehret (eds.). The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Zenodo, 2020. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3712132 (http://ewve-atlas.org) Xiang, Kuperberg 2015 — M. Xiang, G. Kuperberg. Reversing expectations during discourse comprehension // Language, Cognition and Neurosci- ence 30(6), 2015. P. 648–672. Xu et al. 2015 — X. Xu, X. Jiang, X. Zhou. When a causal assumption is not satisfied by reality: differential brain responses to concessive and causal relations during sentence comprehension // Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 30(6), 2015. P. 704–715. 7 Olga Pekelis Russian State University for the Humanities THE DEGREE OF INTEGRATION OR COORDINATION-SUBORDINATION SCALE? ON THE NATURE OF DISTINCTIONS DISPLAYED BY RUSSIAN CAUSAL CLAUSES It has been observed that causal clauses in different languages dis- play a number of similar contrasts, both syntactic and semantic. These may be related to the options of variable binding into a causal clause (cf. the contrast between the German causal markers weil and da in (1)), the scopal properties, root phenomena, the focusability of the causal clause (cf. an example from Russian in (2)), the availability of the speech act and epistemic reading of the causal marker ([Rutherford 1970; Groupe Lambda-1 1975; Johnston 1994; Frey 2016; Charnavel 2019] i.a.). (1) Kaum jemand war beleidigt, weil /*da er i i hardly anyonewas offended because *since he unterbrochen wurde. (Frey 2016: 157) interrupted was ‘Hardly anyone was offended because he was interrupted.’ (2) Lužinym on zanimalsja, tol’ko poskol’ku / *tak kak by.Luzhin he occupied.self only since / *as èto byl fenomen. (V. Nabokov, Zaščita Lužina) this was phenomenon ‘He occupied himself with Luzhin only because he was a phe- nomenon.’ There are at least two competing approaches to dealing with these facts. According to one of them (see the works by Oleg Belyaev [2015a, b]), such distinctions are best analysed in terms of coordina- tion and subordination. According to the second approach, the distinc- tions are due to the fact that causal clauses can be attached at different The degree of integration or coordination-subordination scale? structural levels, manifesting different degrees of integration with their licensing clause ([Frey 2016; Charnavel 2019], i.a). In this talk, the restrictions on the use of Russian causal clauses will be investigated based on the Russian National Corpus data. It will be suggested that in order to account for the overall picture of such re- strictions, a mix of two approaches is required, i.e. both the degree of integration and the coordination-subordination parameter underlie the observed restrictions. If one considers both parameters and not only one of them, consistent correlations emerge between formal and inter- pretative properties of Russian causal clauses, on the one hand, and their values in terms of both parameters, on the other. Furthermore, the degrees of integration encoded by Russian causal clauses turn out to be different from those in German. While in German, according to [Frey 2016], the da-clause is a peripheral, and never a central, adver- bial clause, the Russian subordinator poskol’ku, which seems to be the closest counterpart of da, appears to introduce a central adverbial clause. This suggests that while the degree of syntactic integration is a typologically valid parameter as far as the systems of causal clauses are concerned, its relevant values are language-specific. A typologi- cally particular phenomenon is the opposition of two Russian causal subordinators, potomu čto and ottogo čto, both meaning ‘because’. Both prove to introduce central adverbial clauses, but differ in that the latter is licensed in a very deep position of its host clause (most proba- bly, within the VP). This structural difference