Quasi-synonymy of Danish causal conjunctions from the speaker’s perspective

Abstract

The article explores a fragment of the grammatical system of the Danish language, which represents a regular formal variation of auxiliary language markers — causal conjunctions fordi, for, eftersom, thi. The functional and pragmatic description of each of them is proposed based on the anthropocentric approach. This approach is aimed at studying the linguistic expression of the speaker’s orientation in denotative reality and communication. In terms of expressing causation, this presupposes differentiation of ways to substantiate the speaker’s assertion, depending on different sources of causation: the speaker’s own inference (for); appeal to knowledge, common to all participants in communication (thi); justifying one objective fact with another (fordi), justifying the speaker’s own inference with an objective fact (eftersom). The etymology of conjunctions, as well as the temporal correlation of the predicates in causal and main clauses, allows us to determine the reasons for the speaker to organize the mental space of causation in different ways. In addition, the use of the conceptual blending concept allows us to explain why one conjunction is replaced by another in oral speech.