Causal inference or conventionalized meaning? A corpus study of the German connector nachdem ‘after’ in regional standard varieties

Abstract

AbstractDrawing on a corpus study using German and Austrian parliamentary protocols, this paper shows that the originally temporal connectornachdem‘after’ may carry causal meaning in southern German standard varieties. In these varieties,nachdemclauses may occur with individual level predicates, cases which, I will argue, provide unambiguously causal contexts since a temporal succession of events is excluded with individual level predicates. Whilenachdemdisplays polysemy comparable to Englishsincein southern German standard varieties, it is a temporal marker in central and northern German varieties and a causal link may arise only due to a conversational implicature. The observed polysemy coincides with a higher token frequency ofnachdemas well as a higher incidence of present tense use in thenachdemclause in the respective southern German varieties. Remarkably, causalnachdemclauses show a clear tendency to be fronted to the matrix clause despite the overall tendency of causal clauses to be post-posed, both cross-linguistically and in German, which may be explained in terms of information structure and discourse-organizing functions.