On the subjectivity of Mandarin reason connectives: Robust profiles or genre-sensitivity?

Recent corpus-based studies have shown that differences in subjectivity − the degree to which speakers express themselves in an utterance − can account for the usage of causal connectives (because, so) in major European languages. If the notion of subjectivity is a basic cognitive principle, it ought to play a role in the description of connectives in other languages. In this chapter, we present a corpus-based study of three Mandarin reason connectives in different genres: 'jiran', 'yinwei', and 'youyu'. We also examine form-function interactions in the use of sentence-initial and inter-sentential 'yinwei'. We used four subjectivity indicators: propositional attitude, domain (following Sweetser 1990), and the presence and identity of a Subject of Consciousness – the person responsible for constructing the causal relation. Results show that 'jiran' and inter-sentential 'yinwei' display robust subjective profiles across genres, whereas 'youyu' and sentence-initial 'yinwei' mainly express objective relations.