Implicit causality of action verbs at the interface between conceptual structure and discourse coherence relations

Abstract

Implicit causality of interpersonal transitive verbs (IC) pertains to preferences to attribute the cause of a given action to the subject or the object referent in active clauses. Causal attribution is operationalized as the probability of referential continuation in a subsequent explanatory clause. This paper presents an explorative investigation into the causal biases of action verbs, which in contrast to affective verbs have received less attention in IC research. We approach implicit causality as a discourse level phenomenon based on the textual level of discourse representation and enriched by conceptual knowledge. In study 1, we targeted IC effects of German action verbs (N = 52) in sentences containing causal, additive and adversative connectives. Results showed that IC based categories of subject-object-, and non-biasing predicates were clearly discernable in causal contexts only. In study 2, we examined effects of situational knowledge (physical affectedness & social acceptability) and affective appraisals (valence & arousal) represented in the conceptual structure of the verbs on the construal of causality biases and their interplay with immediate contextual information such as gender of referents. Results show that higher degrees of physical affectedness were associated with causal attribution to the object referent. This effect was modulated by the affective properties of the verbs. Our findings revealed the influence of physiological arousal, an affective dimension not considered in previous investigations of IC. Actions with a strong physical impact that were characterized by high arousal, e.g., kick, or tickle were more likely to be explained with reference to the subject. Participants also considered the available contextual information, as indicated by the significant interactions of gender information with arousal. Within the subsample of non-biasing verbs, higher estimates for social behavior increased probabilities of causal attributions to the subject.

Implicit Causality and Consequentiality and Effect of Pronoun Resolution/Quality of Use among EFL Learners

“…In so doing, earlier research has confirmed that L2 speakers depend on other cues which create the expectation for the subject re-mention, especially for familiar subject, parallel function preferences and first-mention (Quyen, 2017). Accordingly, L2 learners have been confirmed to be sensitive to verb-bias and as such, depend on this information in referential process for second languages (Kuehnast, & Meier, 2019).…”

“…Studies have shown that pronoun determination is not merely limited to morphosyantacticconstrictionsincluding number, sexual category and individual, but equally soft limitations including the first-mention predilection, subject preference, grammatical parallelism and, finally, Implicit Causality Bias (Kuehnast, & Meier, 2019). IC bias refers to the bias, as indicated by interpersonal verbs, about the time proportions their object and subject arguments get re-mentioned in a specific sample of clarifications for the possibility described by the verb (Cheng &Almor, 2017).…”

“…Researchers have always focused their attention and debate as to whether the intuitions are defined by linguistic structure or whether this trend could be a result of high-level non-linguistic understanding (van den Hoven, &Ferstl, 2017). However, evidence has shown that the later conclusion is true (Kuehnast, & Meier, 2019). For one, implicit causality is subject to broader social judgmental task and as such, defined by the commonfamiliarity regarding the participants engaged in the particular event (Cheng &Almor, 2017).…”

“…For one, implicit causality is subject to broader social judgmental task and as such, defined by the commonfamiliarity regarding the participants engaged in the particular event (Cheng &Almor, 2017). Other studies have shown that implicit causality is subject to the linguistic structure while on equally has minimal influence from nonlinguistic cognition and general language (Kuehnast, & Meier, 2019). In this respect, there is the inherent necessity to present a study outlining how IC or implicit causality is subject to intuitions and co-references by L2 learners.…”

“…studies have examined implicit causality (Kuehnast, & Meier, 2019). For example, Quyen (2017) engaged in an experimental design by treating the participants to online English tasks to identify the mismatch between the IC predisposition of target verb and the gender attributed to the subject pronoun within the subordinate causal clause.…”