Abstract:

This paper examines reciprocal connections between the discussions on causation in philosophy and in linguistics. Philosophers occasionally seek insights from the linguistic literature on certain expressions, and linguists often rely on philosophers’ analyses of causation, and assume that the relevant linguistic expressions denote philosophical concepts related to causation. Through the study of various semantic aspects of causative constructions, mainly targeting the nature of the dependency encoded in various linguistic constructions and the nature of the relata, this paper explores interfaces between the discussions in the two disciplines, and at the same time points to significant differences in their objects of investigation, in their methods and in their goals. Finally, the paper attempts to observe whether the disciplinary line is maintained, i.e. whether or not it is the case that metaphysical questions are examined as linguistic ones and vice versa.