Because science! Notes on a variable conjunction

Category-free complement selection in causal adjunct phrases

“…In English, there are a variety of causal adjunct phrases such as because of, as a result of, on account of, owing to and in spite of. It was reported recently (Carey 2013;Schnoebelen 2014;Kanetani 2015Kanetani , 2016Kanetani , 2019Bohmann 2016;Bergs 2018;etc.) that a new structure, because X, can be found in colloquial registers, such as conversations and blogs, along with because of NP. Nominals are not the only category employed in the complement, and because now introduces adjectives, adverbs and even verbs.…”

“…It is not easy to ascertain when and how a new structure was generated. Bergs (2018) claimed that the new structure because X began with adjective complements after conducting a partial search of the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA; Davies 2010-), which consists of 400 million words, yet, as far as I have been able to infer based on a search of the relevant data, it appears that the structure because X began with NP complements, as presented in figure 1. Additional data from the OED, COHA and GloWbE will be presented to demonstrate the origin of this phrase.…”

“…The structure of the article is as follows: section 2 deals with the nature of the causeeffect coherence relation and the process of deriving the new structure of because X. Simultaneously, in this section, we delve into the problem of the origin of the phrase occupying the X slot, which is considered an AP complement by Bergs (2018). With data from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and some additional corpora, I claim that the usage began with NP complements and later extended to APs and other types of complements.…”

"Well, like, oh yeah...": non-dialogical functions of discourse markers in journalistic writing

“…Another case involves the 'because x' construction that encompasses 'because + Adj', 'because + N' and 'because + particle'. Bergs (2018) demonstrates in his article on the 'because x' construction that despite the fact that this is not necessarily a recent construction by any means, "(p)resent-day English seems to have seen a spread of the micro-construction(s) and the development of the meso-construction, partly because of increased type frequency, but also because of prominent and popular singular constructs such as because science or because reasons that serve as attractors in a kind of snowcloning effect", which were made prominent especially due to their appearances online (2018: 57).…”

“…Furthermore, the analysis of these two constructions also shows that once certain 'popular singular constructs' are frequently used and spread to the mainstream via internet usage, which is increasingly an important fashion for new constructions, slang terms etc. to spread, they can serve as influencers/attracters for snowcloning effects for new constructions (Bergs 2018). Furthermore, it can lead to the generalization of a given construction's meaning which allows it to take on (inter)subjective stances.…”