Implicit causality biases of Romanian interpersonal verbs: elicitation and initial results

Abstract

Implicit causality is the property of interpersonal verbs to relate two human or animate entities in such a way that one of the referents is assumed to have caused the action or attitude described by the verb. This assumption, which has been termed bias and which is seemingly rooted in the argument structure of verbs, affects remention and subsequent pronominalization. This paper surveys theoretical and psycholinguistic approaches to causality in language with a focus on implicit causal relations expressed inter-clausally by verbs. It also presents the preliminary results of an off-line sentence-continuation study in which we tested the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural consistency of the implicit causality bias patterns of interpersonal verbs in Romanian.