Subjectiviteit en de Spaanse connectieven porque, ya que en puesto que

In this article the use of the Spanish causal connectives porque, ya que and puesto que is studied with respect to the subjectivity of the coherence relations in which they occur. The use of the notion 'subjectivity' to explain the distribution of these connectives is contrasted with the content/epistemic domain dichotomy, as proposed by Sweetser (1990) (the speech act domain is left aside here). Our attempt originates from earlier findings for causal connectives in Dutch. Analysis in terms of the domain-dichotomy could not account for differences in use between the connectives in question. An analysis in terms of subjectivity however did reveal variation in use. In the present study a corpus analysis is carried out on a sample from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. The subjectivity of the relational contexts is determined by means of a perspective analysis. The relations are also analysed with respect to their domain of interpretation (epistemic or content). The results show that the three connectives do not discriminate between these domains; they all occur in epistemic relations (as only a minor part of the relations expressed by the connectives are content relations in this corpus, only provisional conclusions can be drawn with respect to their use in this domain). In terms of subjectivity however, ya que-contexts clearly deviate from porque- and puesto que-contexts, in that the former are restricted to contexts in which the perspective lies with a third-person who is quoted. The latter contexts are subjective as well, but their perspective configuration is far more diverse. It is concluded that these findings are promising for a subjectivity-based account of the use of these connectives. It is proposed that future analyses should be carried out on other and less subjective corpora