Epistemic causality/ implicit SOC causality

As noted in the previous sections, epistemic causality is typically marked with dus, but it can easily be marked with daarom as well. Overall, dus-marked and daarom-marked epistemic relations appear to have different charactistics. One of the differences is reflected in different types of modality present in epistemic causal

relations marked with dus or daarom. Another difference concerns information status of the conclusions that occur in daarom marked and dus marked relations.

Modality types

To start with the differences in modality type, generally speaking, it is assumed that the category of ‘epistemicity’ contains different kinds of conclusions, e.g. subjective evaluations of a situation S (conclusions about the nature of a phenomenon or situation), ‘real’ epistemic modality (conclusions regarding the probability that proposition P is true), or deontic modality (conclusions about the desirability of some course of action expressed in P) (Pander Maat & Sanders 2000: 74, Pander Maat 1994: 278). Deontic and epistemic modality are understood as differing in terms that coincide to a great extent with the concepts distinguished in the present study.

In these distinctions, a relation at a conceptual level is visible with both the

‘domains’ categories ‘content’ and ‘epistemic’ and with differing roles of the

‘present speaker’ as proposed in the Subjectivity account. Deontic modality has to do with ‘agents’ and ‘desirability of an action’, and is not especially linked to the speaker as a source of judgement of the situation depicted. Epistemic modality, on the contrary, is typically concerned with the ‘truth’ of a proposition in which the speaker is a primary source of responsibility of the epistemic judgement (cf.

Traugott 1989; Sweetser 1990; Bybee et al. 1994). Therefore, an obvious hypothesis concerning the difference of epistemic dus vs. epistemic daarom could be that daarom specializes in deontic modality (as this is most likely the most ‘objective’

modality type that is related to actions of intentional agents) and dus specializes in epistemic modality (as in this type the speaker is depicted as the source for truth values). Following Sweetser (1990:49) ‘deontic’ and ‘epistemic’ modality are defined as follows:

Modality type Definition

Deontic modality real-world obligation, permission or ability Epistemic modality necessity, probability or possibility

Figure 4.9: Distinction between deontic and epistemic modality (Sweetser 1990).

In principle, although all types can be expressed by both connectives, dus appears to prefer ‘real epistemic’ modality, while daarom appears to be distributed over the two types rather evenly. Table 4.9 presents an overview.

Table 4.9 Modality type in dus and daarom

Epistemic modality Deontic modality Total

Daarom 14 12 26

Dus 70 6 76

An example of epistemic dus is (66), an example of deontic daarom is (67).

(66) (De hoofdredacteur van het radioprogramma Met het oog op morgen vertelt over een brief die hij ooit ontving van een luisteraar) De goede man schreef: 'Mijnheer, u bent de baas van 'Het Oog', en ik ben de baas van mijn vrouw. sp We kunnen dus op niveau praten.' Waarop de vraag volgt of Van Hoorn nu eindelijk iets kan doen aan die vermaledijde begintune. (op050127)

(The editor in chief of the radio show, “With the Eye on Tomorrow”

tells about a letter he once received from a listener.) The good man wrote: ‘Sir, you are the boss of “The Eye,” and I am the boss of my wife. sp Therefore we can talk on the same level.’ After this, the

question follows whether Van Hoorn can finally do something about that cursed opening tune.

(67) (Lange spelers selecteren voor volleybal vergroot kansen op

internationaal succes) “Nederland heet een lang volk te zijn, maar via de clubs vinden we de lange talenten niet. Ze lopen wel op straat rond; vaak gefrustreerd al vroeg met sport gestopt, omdat hun motoriek tijdens de eerste puberjaren achterloopt bij die van kleinere leeftijdsgenootjes. sp Daarom moeten wij zelf naar de scholen gaan om ze te vinden en om ze te overtuigen dat ze juist door volleybal meer eigenwaarde kunnen krijgen.'' (ac080124)

(Selecting tall players for volleyball increases chances of international success)”The Dutch are meant to be a tall people, but we can’t find the tall talents through the clubs. They’re walking around on the streets;

often already long frustrated and having given up the sport, because their motor skills are not that of their smaller peers when they’re teenagers. sp For this reason, we have to go to schools ourselves to find them and convince them they’d be greatly appreciated in volleyball.

In (66) the truth of the situation depicted in S2 is argued for, the conclusion in (67) is concerned with the desirability of the action described in S2. Dus is also easily combined with deontic reasoning, but in half of the cases counted as ‘deontic’ in Table 4.9, an interpretation as epistemic reasoning is possible too. An example is (68):

(68) De aanbieders van mobiele telefonie in Nederland zien langzaam een einde komen aan de ongebreidelde groei van het aantal klanten. Van de jongeren tussen de 14 en 35 jaar heeft 82 procent inmiddels een mobieltje en de overigen zitten er niet op te wachten. sp Het wordt dus tijd om de huidige klanten te gaan vasthouden (ac050135).

Mobile telephone providers in the Netherlands are finally seeing a let up in previously unbridled growth in the number of customers. 82 percent of young people between 14 and 35 years old already have a mobile phone and the rest aren’t interested in one. sp That’s why the time has come to keep the existing clientele.

The reasoning presented in (68) can concern both desirability of the action and the moment this should happen. Although this kind of ambiguity did not occur with

daarom-fragments in my sample¸ there is no principled reason to think that this kind of ambiguity belongs to dus exclusively.

Daarom is easily combined with epistemic reasoning processes too, but in these cases the causal relation often seems to have some descriptive flavor:

(69) Het behoort tot de veronderstelde zekerheden dat jongeren in een disco in alle veiligheid feest kunnen vieren.s1 sp Het is daarom schokkend te ervaren dat de met de beste bedoelingen opgehangen kerstversiering als een fakkel begint te branden, er paniek uitbreekt en de capaciteit van de nooduitgangen door welke oorzaak dan ook ontoereikend is. (ha020101) It’s one of those supposed certainties that young people in a disco can party under safe circumstances. sp For this reason/therefore it is very shocking to see Christmas decorations which were hung up with the best of intentions start to burn like a torch, panic break out and the capacity of the emergency exits fail to be enough for any reason at all.

In (69), S1 can be interpreted as an argument for the truth or acceptability of the negative evaluation (‘het is schokkend’) of the situation depicted in the embedded clause in S2. But in the given context this evaluation is so self-evident, that the relation between S1 and S2 can also be understood as descriptive: the situation in S1 leads to the situation of ‘experiencing as shocking,’ the complement sentence of S2.

A similar ambiguity between a conclusion reading and a content non-volitional reading of the causal relation occurs in half of the daarom-marked causal relations, and only in one sixth of the dus-marked ones.

Performativity of the conclusion

A final difference between epistemic dus and daarom to be discussed here is the fact that daarom-marked ones can be modified with respect to information status, whereas this is impossible with dus-marked ones. In dus marked epistemic relations the conclusion is always performed in the actual discourse situation and in daarom marked epistemic relations, the conclusion may already be accepted.

Table 4.10. Information status of the conclusion in epistemic relations marked with dus or daarom.

Conclusion performed Conclusion given Total

Daarom 24 7 31

Dus 76 0 76

Examples of daarom-marked epistemic relations with ‘generally accepted conclusions’ are (70) and (71):

(70) ,,Maar bij ernstige brandwonden is het hele lichaam ziek'', zegt Hermans ,,De lever, de nieren, alle organen doen mee. (sp) Daarom is de zorg voor deze patiënten zo ingewikkeld.'' (ac020104).

“Serious burns make the whole body ill”says Hermans. “The liver, the kidneys, all organs are affected That’s why the care for these patients is so complicated.

(71) Zonder veel moeite weerlegt Hoppe de twee belangrijkste argumenten voor euthanasie - autonomie en medelijden. Natuurlijk is de mens autonoom, bepaalt hijzelf wel of niet behandeld te willen worden. (sp) Daarom zijn wilsbeschikkingen ook zo belangrijk: wie vastlegt niet kunstmatig beademd te willen worden, mag door geen enkele arts toch tot zo'n behandeling worden gedwongen. (ac050115)

Without a lot of effort Hoppe refutes the two main arguments for euthanasia—autonomy and pity. Of course a person is autonomous and decides for himself whether or not to be treated That’s why last wills are so important. Whoever states that they do not wish to be treated, may not be forced treatment by any doctor.

S1 in (70) can easily be interpreted as an argument for the conclusion in S2, that care for burn victims is complicated. However, this is not the only thing that happens in this fragment. Judging from the referential expression zo (‘this’) that precedes the evaluative expression ingewikkeld (‘complicated’), this evaluation is not new. That this specific kind of care is complicated must either be obvious from the context, or must have been concluded at an earlier stage. In the case of (71), the complexity of care is conceptually present in the context: the fragment is taken from an article that discusses the need for special care for this kind of patient. A similar example is (70). This kind of modification of the causal relation characterizes 7out of 31 occurrences of daarom in my sample. It never occurs with dus. What is more, usage of dus is impossible in the contexts of (70) and (71). Whether this kind of

‘non-performative conclusion relations’ should be regarded as epistemic causality at all remains a matter of debate³². This characteristic is in line with the inherent

‘argumentativity’ of dus already observed above; a characteristic that is lacking in daarom.

In sum, although differences between epistemic dus and daarom are less clearcut than the difference between volitional dus and daarom, they can be related to characteristics of their respective hypothesized prototypes. A first difference concerns modality type. Proportionally daarom is more often used in deontic contexts than dus is, and dus has a clear preference for epistemic modality that is lacking in daarom. Generally, deontic modality is regarded as being more

‘objective’ than epistemic modality. A second difference is that epistemic relations marked with daarom seem to be more descriptive than the ones marked with dus;

conclusion relations marked with dus are performative by definition, while in those marked with daarom the conclusion may have already been conceptually present.

The difference between dus and daarom can be characterized with reference to the concept SOC speaker distance. Epistemic daarom seems to have the effect of

32 Cf. Sanders & Spooren (to appear: 20): A(…) distinguishing feature of epistemic relation is that they involve the generation/inference of new knowledge (as opposed to the conveying of existing knowledge that occurs frequently in speech act relations)

increasing the distance between SOC and speaker, that is, daarom marked relations can in many cases be interpreted as reporting epistemic relations that possesses some kind of general validity. In presenting it this way, the speaker does not accept exclusive responsibility, and thus distances himself from the performative process.