1. Causal connectives in the history of English
Elly van Gelderen
GLAC, May 2019

2. Outline Where do causal connectives come from?
Some examples: for, since, because
Structural changes
Integration: Central - Peripheral
Iconicity and sequence

3. Causality
Innate Pre-linguistic children relate cause and effect (Leslie & Keeble 1987). Grammaticalization: time > cause Abraham 1976; Heine et al Sweetser 1990 Traugott & König 1991 on since

4. Three causal Cs (1) for a. space > purpose b. time > cause
(content + epistemic + SA)
(2) since
time > cause (content + epistemic + speech act)
(3) because
cause (content + epistemic + SA)

5. There are other causal Cs
Now that you know … (Louviot 2018); as; in that; consequently after could be but isn’t: (1) After we heard the lecture we felt greatly inspired (Traugott & König 1991: 194) The reason (T&K) is past vs non-past or state: (2) Since Susan left him John has been very miserable (temporal or causal) (3) Since you are so angry, there is no point … (causal only)

6. Sweetser’s Content, epistemic, speech act
(1) John came back, because he loved her. (2) John loved her, because he came back. (3) What are you doing tonight, because there’s a good movie on. This is also connected to integration (Quirk et al’s adjunct-disjunct) and sequencing. Stenström (1998) has useful criteria (clefting, answer to wh). Cf. Haegeman.

7. Currently in COHA

8. Examples with for: see handout A
P use of space, time, purpose, cause Finite for vs non-finite for PPs are frequently preposed They are content/central but relatively unintegrated; also insubordinate. Not iconic

9. Examples with since: handout B
Siððan < sið and ðam (Skeat 1892: 430) only C in OE, temporal and causal (Traugott & König 195, after Mitchell), first content then epistemic Finite because of the temporal connection Central and integrated (V-last and causing V2) No clear iconicity New cycle of P in ME: nominalized N?

10. Examples with because: handout C
Starts as insubordinate/unintegrated But integrated/central by late C14 Currently, both central and peripheral Also complex P by late C14

11. Features
Feature Economy Minimize the semantic and interpretable features in the derivation, e.g: VP-Adverbial CP-Adverbial C-Head semantic > [iF] > [uF] Finite causative vs non-finite purposive: Time – space (in front)

12. Structural change
CP > CP PP C’ PP C’ for X C TP for X C TP [cause] …. PP (that) …

13. Insubordinate > subordinate?
Traugott (2017): early on subordinate. (Higashiizumi (2006) suggests the opposite). With because, insubordinate seems to be earlier. What happens with because + since > P

14. High/low position
Lakoff (1965, but adapted sentence; Sweetser; Haegeman; etc): (1) He didn’t leave because she arrived [he either left or not] (2) He didn’t leave since his coat is still there. [he didn’t leave] For- and since-clauses: start low, as central adverbial Because- clause: different

16. Iconicity (for time); sequence
Ford (1993): causal clauses follow main clause in spoken Diessel (2005): the same but academic has 27% initial (mainly since/as). For: initially, they mainly follow Since: both Because: both

17. References
Charnavel, Isabelle Perspectives in Causal Clauses. NLLT. Dam, Johannes van The Causal Clause and Causal Prepositions in Early Old English Prose. Groningen: Wolters. Diessel, Holger Competing motivations for the ordering of main and adverbial clauses. Linguistics 43: Esseesy, Mohssen Grammaticalization of Arabic Prepositions and Subordinators. Leiden: Brill. Ford, Cecilia Grammar in Interaction. CUP.

18. Higashiizumi, Yuko From a subordinate clause to an independent clause. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo Publishing. Louviot, Elise Pragmatic uses of nu in Old Saxon and Old English. In Sylvie Hancil, et al. (eds), New Trends in Grammaticalization and Language Change, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Skeat, Walter Principles of English Etymology. Oxford: Clarendon. Sweetser, Eve From Etymology to Pragmatics. CUP. Traugott, Elizabeth Insubordination’ in the light of the Uniformitarian Principle. English Language and Linguistics 21.2: 289–310.