Cause-and-effect relationships modeling: cognitive perspective (based on the English language)

INTRODUCTION. Cause-and-effect relationships (CER) are primarily examined in philosophy, logic, and linguistics. Studying CER at the current stage of language science development is relevant in the context of mental and linguistic structures interaction. The aim of this study is to propose CER modeling from a cognitive perspective, to describe conceptual structures and their representation in language.

MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research material was acquired from literary works in English, the British National Corpus, and online services with access to dictionaries. The study employed cognitive modeling and conceptual-representative analysis.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. Interpretation of CER is a basic human cognitive activity. Constructing linguistic means that convey CER and relate to events comprehension, the speaker operates with propositional structures. Having this in mind and using the speaker’s comprehension of two events as a constraint, we identified four main models. The models reflect the order of CER development: from cause to effect, from effect to cause, and reciprocal order. Their representation in language includes complex and compound sentences of various nature, sentences with absolute, causative, subjective-predicative constructions, and supra-phrasal units.

CONCLUSION. The possibilities of propositional CRE modeling are open due to the number of events reflecting CER, their perception as a chain of causes and effects.