TITLE:
Unpacking the English Because-Constructions as Used in Three Cognitive Domains: A New Approach to Analyzing Its Semantic-Syntactic Features
AUTHORS:
Guohua Zhang
KEYWORDS:
Construction Grammar, Because, Cognitive Domains, Pragmatic Ambiguity
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.13 No.7,
July
25,
2025
ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the semantic-syntactic features of English because from a constructionist perspective. It is claimed that because is used to indicate causality in three basic syntactic constructions, namely, the Causality-Stating Construction committed to an objective description of a causal relation in reality, the Causality-Inferring Construction used to make inference on an assumed causal relation between two entities, and the Causality-Explaining Construction aimed at offering an explanation for a prior speech act. Such usages represent three cognitive domains in which language users cognize and interact with the physical and mental worlds, i.e., the physical-social domain, the epistemic domain and the speech act domain. All the usages in such three domains share the same formal expression, namely, “q, because p”. Such basic constructions are interrelated to each other through metaphorical mappings, displaying respectively syntactic-semantic features and constructional polysemy. It is suggested that because is not polysemous but has pragmatic ambiguity. Additionally, the Causality-Stating Construction has two functional varieties, both of which are employed to convey causal relation between the two propositions contained in the main clause and the subordinate clause, as based on presupposition.