Causality in English

The present study is based on a MA thesis submitted to the council of College of Education, Ibn Rushd, University of Baghdad, Iraq in 1989 for the degree of master of Arts in English Language and Linguistics. It describes the syntactic and semantic aspects of adverbial clauses and phrases of reason through which the English language mainly expresses the idea of causality. Furthermore, it presents the general points of causality as a philosophical context. A short review of the traditional treatment of causality is given at first, followed by the transformational treatment. It derives some rules that transform kernel sentences into adverbial clauses and, if possible, phrases of reason having the same meaning and embed them within a matrix sentence.

Échantillon de lecture
Text Sample:
Chapter 2.4 Universality and Uniformity of Causation:
The universality and uniformity of causation are two completely different principles. One of them could be true without the other's, being true.
2.4.1 Universality:
By the universality of causation is meant that no change happens without some cause; in short, every event has a cause. Websters Dictionary (1961 : 350) affirms this point in stating that causation means that nothing happens arbitrarily but always as the result of definite series of causes. Similarly, al-Farabi (d. 950), as cited by Hammond (1947: 16-17), formulates the principle of causality on the basis that every event must have a cause.
Such proposition expresses the indispensable dependence of every effect on some cause. Taylor (1967 : 57) maintains that throughout the history of philosophy and until very recent time, the universality of causation has been considered very obvious and sometime seven self-evident. Today, what was considered quite obvious turns out to be controversial. There are many thinkers and philosophers who claim that some change may result with no cause at all. Flew (1979 : 54), for example, shows that some events at the atomic level do not have causes; they occur at random. Russell confesses that an advanced scientific understanding of the world needs no such notion, i.e., universality of causation. Therefore, Taylor (1967 : 57-58) concludes that there is no philosophical way of proving the universality of causation.
What is more, there is no scientific or empirical way to prove the universality or non-universality of causation since occurrences which seem to constitute exceptions are perfectly common. If some change takes place and no cause of that change is recognized, as often happens, one can say that no such cause exists.
2.4.2 Uniformity:
Uniformity of causation means that the relations between changes can be expressed in the form of general laws; in brief, similar causes always produce similar effects. Taylor (1967 : 57-53) states that some philosophers like Hume and Mill express this principle in the statement "the future will resemble the past." That means, the fact that something has happened a number of times makes us expect it to happen again.
This principle, in contrast with that of universality, is relatively recent in philosophy. It emerges with the development of science and ist emphasis on the laws of nature. Obviously, there is a close relation between statements expressing causal connection and those expressing laws of nature in the sense that the former eight be explained in terms of the latter.
Barrett (1959: 215-217) points out that uniformity in nature gives the probability that under the same conditions the same results will follow in the future as in the past. We have learned from experience in the past that thunder follows lightning, that the sun rises every morning and the like. Prom such experience, we learn only that general regularity has existed in the past; we do not learn with certainty whether it must be so or it will continue to be so in the future. We cannot know that we hear thunder after seeing lightning nor that the sun will rise tomorrow. Hence, this is a process of assuming rather than proving the uniformity of nature.
As a result, this principle is criticized in that it is always possible to find examples of things behaving according to such a law but which are not causally connected. Russell (1968: 93), for instance, remarks that day is invariably followed by night and this by that and yet neither is the cause of the other. The orthodox response is that day could not be called the cause of night because it would not be succeeded by night if earth's rotation were to cease or to grow so slowly that one total rotation would take a year. A cause is,: thus, not necessarily followed immediately by ist effect.
2.5The Idea of Necessary Connection:
It was generally supposed that there is a certain necessary connection between