#3770. The predictability of implicit causes: testing frequency and topicality explanations

October 2026publication date
Proposal available till 08-06-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

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Journal’s subject area:
Language and Linguistics;
Linguistics and Language;
Communication;
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Abstract:
In discourses involving implicit causality, the implicit cause of the event is referentially predictable, that is, it is likely to be rementioned. We test two possible explanations: (1) The frequency account suggests that people learn that implicit causes are predictable through experience with the most frequent patterns of reference in natural language, and (2) the topicality account asks whether implicit causes tend to play topical roles in the discourse, which itself may lead to the perception of discourse accessibility. We found no evidence for the topicality account: in two experiments, implicit causality affected predictability but not topicality, and in a corpus of natural speech, implicit causes tended to not occupy topical positions.
Keywords:
implicit causality; corpus of natural speech; natural language

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