Corpus-based studies in various languages have demonstrated that some connectives
are used preferentially to express subjective versus objective meanings, for
example, omdat vs. want in Dutch. However, Spanish connectives have been understudied
from this perspective. Moreover, most of the studies of subjectivity have focused on
explicit relations and little is known about the subjectivity of implicit coherence
relations. In addition, the role that text type plays in the meaning and use of causal
relations and their connectives is still under discussion. This study aims to analyze
the local contexts of Spanish causal explicit and implicit relations in different text
types by carrying out manual analyses of subjectivity. 360 relations marked by three
prototypical causal connectives and 120 implicit relations were extracted from academic
and journalistic texts. The analytical model applied is based on an integrative approach
to subjectivity. Statistical analyses indicate a particular behavior of Spanish
connectives and implicit relations and a three-way interaction between subjectivity,
text type, and linguistic marking in journalistic texts. Therefore, this study reveals
new insights into subjectivity in Spanish discourse.
Language users have preferences for the connectives they choose to express causal relations. These choices may depend on the subjectivity involved in the relation. Dutch connectives illustrate this situation clearly: want (‘since/for’) is preferred typically for expressing subjective relations and omdat (‘because’) for objective ones. While various corpus-based studies have revealed a similar pattern in other languages, little attention has been paid to Spanish from this perspective. Recent corpus-based studies analyzed the connectives porque (‘because’), ya que (‘since’) and puesto que (‘given that’) using two different methods of analysis. Surprisingly, the findings did not coincide with the previous literature on Spanish connectives, and the semantic profile of such connectives in terms of subjectivity remained unclear. The current study again aims to investigate whether these connectives show systematic variation in terms of subjectivity, using crowdsourcing experimentation. Results show that Spanish native speakers prefer puesto que over porque to express subjective relations. However, no statistically significant difference was observed between porque and ya que. This study offers a better understanding of Spanish connectives in terms of subjectivity. Furthermore, it contributes to the assessment of the use of crowdsourcing as a useful and reliable method to elucidate the meaning and use of connectives.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.