Models of causation and causal verbs

1 Introduction Recent models of causation place the concept of CAUSE within a broader framework of concepts that includes the notions of LETTING, HINDERING, HELPING and PREVENTING. In each model, the related concepts are defined in terms of a small set of conceptual distinctions. This paper examines the relationship between the cognitive and linguistic systems. Specifically, we investigate whether these models of causation can capture the distinctions that underlie the semantics of causal verbs. There are a number of structures that can be used to express the notion of CAUSE in English and other languages, including causal connectives (e.g., because), prepositions (because of, thanks to) and lexical causatives, i.e., verbs that encode both the notions of CAUSE and RESULT, as in Peter broke the stick (i.e., caused the stick to break). Yet another means of expressing CAUSE is the use of a verb that includes the notion of CAUSE without specification of a particular RESULT, as in the verbs cause, let, help or prevent Such verbs are often referred to as periphrastic causative verbs (also analytic, auxiliary or overt causatives). They are of special interest because they seem to encode most directly the range of notions suggested by recent models of causation. It is for this reason then that, in examining these models of causation, we focused on this small but well-known class of verbs. Specifically, we asked whether the class of periphrastic causative verbs is semantically organized in a manner consistent with recent models of causation. We addressed this question by first obtaining a relatively exhaustive list of the periphrastic causative verbs in the English language. We then derived possible semantic organizations for these verbs from two recent models of causation. To test between the two models, we compared the predicted organizations against those obtained from people in a series of sorting and rating experiments.

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