English and French causal connectives in contrast

Abstract

Discourse connectives are often said to be language specific, and therefore not easily paired with a translation equivalent in a target language. However, few studies have assessed the magnitude and the causes of these divergences. In this paper, we provide an overview of the similarities and discrepancies between causal connectives in two typologically related languages: English and French. We first discuss two criteria used in the literature to account for these differences: the notion of domains of use and the information status of the cause segment. We then test the validity of these criteria through an empirical contrastive study of causal connectives in English and French, performed on a bidirectional corpus. Our results indicate that French and English connectives have only partially overlapping profiles and that translation equivalents are adequately predicted by these two criteria.

Where is procedural meaning located? Evidence from discourse connectives and tenses

“…Similar cross-linguistic evidence about the different ways of encoding procedural information with connectives is provided inZufferey and Cartoni (2012), in a contrastive analysis of causal connectives in French and English, among other languages.…”

The Linguistic Formulation of Fallacies Matters: The Case of Causal Connectives

“…Yet, corpus studies have shown that these connectives are not interchangeable, as each of them has specific nuances of meanings (e.g. Pit 2007;Zufferey and Cartoni 2012). In this paper, we compare the role of four French causal connectives that convey attributive meaning, in other words that can be used to introduce an argument implicitly attributed by the speaker to an external source, as these connectives can be used to introduce straw man fallacies.…”

“…In addition, Kamalski et al considered subjective connectives only as a global category in which many different connectives are included. Yet, subjectivity is a scalar notion (Degand and Pander Maat 2003) and some connectives are more strongly subjective than others (Pit 2007;Zufferey and Cartoni 2012). In this paper, we will assess the way specific connectives differing in their degree of subjectivity create a forewarning effect in argumentative contexts.…”

Connective-Lex: A Web-Based Multilingual Lexical Resource for Connectives

“…Using the same corpus-based research paradigm, Mortier and Degand (2009) focused on French en fait [in fact] and Dutch eigenlijk [actually], gathered statistics on their collocations, signaled relations, etc., and obtained a detailed "relational semantic field" that contributes to explaining under what circumstances the two connectives have the same or a different meaning. In a similar way, Zufferey and Cartoni (2012) examined English and French causal connectives and found a number of fine-grained features implicated in their conditions of (monolingual) use and their translation.…”