Subjectivity and Causality in discourse and cognition: Evidence from corpus analyses, acquisition and processing

Cognitively oriented linguists have various linguistic resources at their disposal,
and therefore need to develop methodological strategies of when to use which
method. This chapter illustrates the benefits of using converging evidence.
We review research results from several methodologies, including the use of
corpus-based, acquisition and processing data, in order to illustrate what kinds
of insights this brings at the level of discourse. The results suggest that Causality
and Subjectivity are two basic cognitive notions that organize our knowledge of
coherence relations. They help us explain the system and use of causal relations
and their linguistic expressions in everyday language use, and they account
for discourse processing and representation, as well as the acquisition order of
connectives.