Context-based interpretation of subordinating conjunctions in communication

Abstract

While acknowledging that different conjunctions define different relationships between ideas, this study focuses on the interpretation of four subordinating conjunctions, namely, because, since, for and as in causal clauses. Since the meanings of these conjunctions vary according to context, among other things, they usually pose problems to language users leading to misinterpretations. Not only does this emerge from the fine and minute distinctions in usage between them, but also due to the lack of adequate knowledge of the rules of language use in their metatheoretical framework. This kind of knowledge is crucial in interactive communication, speech acts, pragmatics, logical arguments and multidisciplinary debates. The data for this study were compiled from grammar books, articles, and from the British National Corpus (BNC). The data were analyzed not only to identify the discrete features of each conjunction that would render it different from its synonymous counterparts, but also to understand the kind of knowledge required to determine the choice. The findings of the study reveal that, in addition to the syntactic constraints, the degree of the ‘givenness’ or ‘newness’ of the information that the conjunction introduces, context, degree of formality of the register, and lexical density of the utterance that contains the conjunctions emerged to play a role.