Broadly speaking, Girju 20021 defined that causality refers to the way of knowing if one state of affairs causes another. In English, the causative constructions can be explicit or implicit.
- Explicit causation patterns contain relevant keywords like cause, effect, causation relationship
- Implicit causative constructions involve inference based on semantic analysis and background knowledge, e.g. disease-causing bacteria
Different types of causal relations
Explicit causative constructions
Causal connectives
Adverbial causal link
for this reason; with the result that
Prepositional causal links
because of, thanks to, due to
Subordination causal links
Resultative conjunctions
e.g. The colonies came to realize they had to separate from England, so
they started the Revolutionary War.
because, as, since, for, so, so that
Structural link
e.g. Being cloudy, the experiment was postponed.
Correlative comparative construction
e.g. The traffic was so heavy that I couldn’t arrive on time.
Clause-integrated link
e.g. The new satellite was named ASUKA (flying birds). The reason was that the migratory bird soaring into deep space.
e.g. It is not a myth that world hunger is due to scarcity of food.
Causation verbs
Lexical Decomposition
e.g. cause, lead to, bring about, generate, make, force, allow, kill, melt, dry, break, drop, poison, hang, punch, clean
Verbal causative constructions
Analytic causatives
e.g. “I made him do the homework.” “I got him to do the homework.” “I had him do the homework.”
Morphological causatives (-en, -ify)
blacken, sweeten, thicken, nullify, liquefy, verify
Lexical causatives
kill, feed, die, eat
Conditionals
e.g. If s1, then s2
Causative adverbs and adjectives
Adverbs of perception
audibly, visibly
Adverbs marginally perceptual
manilestly, publicly, conspicuously
Adverbs that involve the notion of a result whose properties are context dependent
successfully, plausibly, conveniently, amusingly, pleasantly
Adverbs that suggest tendencies, liabilities, disposition or potencies
irrevocably, ously, rudely
Adverbs that refer to effects
obediently, gratefully, consequently, painfully
Adverbs of means
mechanically, magically
Implicit causative constructions
Complex nominals expressing causation
with an implicit causation relationship
cold tremble (namely, NP1) causes malaria mosquitoes (namely, NP2)
with an explicit but ambiguons causation relationship
NP1-produced NP2; NPl-inducing NP2 ; NPl-provoking NP2 ; NP1-related NP2; NP2 with NP1 ; P2 by NP1
with an explicit, unambiguous causation relationship
NPl-causing NP2 (e.g, “disease-causing bacteria”) ; NP2-caused NPI (e.g., “infection-caused hess” )
Implicit causality of verbs
readers prefer to interpret the noun as referring to one or other of the two potential referents