title: Direct causation in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events.
abstract: This research proposes a new theory of direct causation and examines how this concept plays a key role in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events. According to the no-intervening-cause hypothesis, a causal chain can be described by a single-clause sentence and construed as a single event if there are no intervening causers between the initial causer and the final causee. Consistent with this hypothesis, participants used single-clause sentences (lexical causatives) more often than two-clause sentences (e.g. periphrastic causatives) for causal chains in which (1) the causer and causee touched (Experiments 1 and 2), and (2) an intervening entity could be construed as an enabling condition rather than another cause (Experiments 2-4). In addition, event judgments paralleled linguistic descriptions: chains that could be described with single-clause expressions were more often construed as single events than chains that could not (Experiments 1-3). Implications for languages other than English, for the linguistic coding of accidental outcomes and for the relationship between cognition and language in general are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, 202 Psychology Building, Memphis, TN 38152, USA. pwolff@memphis.edu
authors.forename: Phillip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wolff
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008128:Logic; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010465:Perception; D009626:Terminology as Topic