Causation in Grammatical Structures

This book brings together research on the topic of causation from experts in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. It seeks to arrive at a more sophisticated understanding both of how causal concepts are expressed in causal meanings, and how those meanings in turn are organized into structures. Chapters address some of the most exciting current issues in the field, including the relata of causal relations; the representation of defeasible causation within verb phrases and at the level of modality; the difference between direct and indirect causal chains; and the representation of these chains in syntax. The book examines data from a wide variety of languages, such as Tohono O'odham, Finnish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Hindi, and Karachay-Balkar, and will be of interest to syntacticians and semanticists, as well as psycholinguists and philosophers, from graduate level upwards.1. Introduction ; FROM CAUSAL THEORIES TO CAUSAL MEANINGS ; 2. Theories of causation can and should inform linguistic theory ; 3. Formal semantics for causal constructions ; 4. Two types of causal statements ; 5. Force dynamics in causal meaning and reasoning ; 6. Eliminating causative entailments with the force-dynamic framework: The case of the Tohono O'odham frustrative cem ; 7. Modality and causation: Two sides of the same coin ; 8. Intentional action and the semantics of gradable expressions (on the Knobe Effect) ; FROM CAUSAL MEANINGS TO CAUSAL STRUCTURES ; 9. Causation at the syntax-semantics interface ; 10. Causal chains and instrumental case in Hindi/Urdu ; 11. Causativization and event structure ; 12. Inadvertent cause and the unergative-unaccusative split in Vietnamese and English ; 13. Causatives and inchoatives in the lexicon and the syntax: evidence from Italian ; 14. Event-structural prominence and forces in verb meaning shift