Causal Connectivity in Discourse: Towards a Global Characterization of Causal Constructions in Spanish.

This article presents a proposal for the classification of causal constructions and causal connectivity between clauses and larger discourse segments. This classification can be used in future corpus-based studies. To this end, we unify two perspectives and analytical classifications: (a) the distinction, in the Hispanic tradition, between statement-level and utterance-level causals, and (b) the distinction, within the theoretical framework of relational coherence, between semantic and pragmatic causals (van Dijk, 1979; Sanders, 1997), and, in particular, between content causals, speech-act causals, and epistemic causals (Sweetser, 1990). After addressing their linguistic characterization, we consider two types of constructions: those with verbs of speech and thought in the non-causal segment, and borderline cases that can pragmatically be classified as speech-act and epistemic causals. On the one hand, we examine causal connectors, conceiving them as propositional markers (Cuenca, Marín, Romano & Porto, 2011); on the other hand, we analyze causal structures involving more than two related elements. Finally, we highlight the need to identify non-canonical uses of causal structures and to further explore the expression of causality beyond two-member constructions.