Frontmatter; Contents; Introduction; The relevance of causality; On the processing of causal relations; Domains of use or subjectivity? The distribution of three Dutch causal connectives explained; Causal relations in spoken discourse: Asyndetic constructions as a means for giving reasons; Constructions with if, since, and because: Causality, epistemic stance, and clause order; On affirmative and negative complex conditional connectives; Pre- and post-positioning of wenn-clauses in spoken and written German; Counterfactual reasoning and desirability
Summary
English, today's most important international language, is probably the best-described and most widely studied language in linguistic research. This is because there is an immense body of descriptive and theoretical publications and especially because of the existence of large computer corpora for Present-Day English, as well as for older periods of the language and for regional and social varieties. The strength of current English linguistics therefore is its orientation to solid descriptive empirical research. The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics TOPICS IN
