A Study On The Diversification Of Because-Causal Complex Sentences From The Perspective Of Subjectivity

The relationship of cause and effect is prevailing in the natural world and human society. There are many ways to express cause-effect relationship, among which because-causal complex sentence (hereafter called because-CCS) is one of the most basic and important forms. So far, linguists have explored this issue from the perspective of traditional grammar, functional-pragmatic and contrastive analysis. However, the studies on subjective motivation of because-CCS are insufficient.Subjectivity refers to the expression of self and the representation of a speaker's perspective or point of view in discourse– what has been called a speaker's imprint. Subjectificaiton refers to the structures and strategies that languages evolve in the linguistic realization of subjectivity or to the relevant processes of linguistic evolution themselves. The use of because-CCS carries the subjective construal of the users. The present study aims to explore the cognitive motivation of the semantic extensions of because-CCS with the theory of subjectivity and subjectification. The study will first classify because-CCS into three types: logical because-CCS, inferential because-CCS and speech act because-CCS according to the degree of ground involvement, and then it will investigate the process of the diversification of because-CCS due to the involvement of the subjectivity from the synchronic approach. At last, the study will analyze the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic features in the three types of because-CCS.After a careful investigation, we come to the following conclusions: 1) the diversification of because-CCS is cognitively motivated, which means that the diversification is motivated by the construal difference in its conceptualization which results from the degree of the ground involvement in the construal relation; 2) the underlying force for the diversification of because-CCS is deeply rooted in subjectivity. The degree of the ground involvement in the construal of because-CCS suggests the degree of subjectivity in the three types of because-CCS which forms a continuum in the order of less subjective to more subjective: logical because-CCS < inferential because-CCS < speech act because-CCS; 3) the three types of because-CCS have specific linguistic features in terms of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic aspects.