Exceptions to rules: a qualitative analysis of backward causal connectives in Dutch naturalistic discourse.

Language users systematically prefer one lexical item (because) over another (even highly similar) one (since) to express a causal relationship in discourse. Such choices provide a window on speakers' cognitive categorizations, and have been modeled in previous work in terms of subjectivity. This paper analyzes the Dutch connectives omdat (‘because’) and want (‘since/for’) in written text, conversation, and chat interactions. These can be considered a case in point for linguistic categorization since related European languages show similar distinctions. We sketch a profile for the interpretati... Mehr ...