Causation in Dutch and French. Interpersonal Aspects

Degand, Liesbeth [UCL]

After a brief sketch of the lexicogrammatical potential for expressing causation in natural language, more specifically in DutcFrench, I will try to give a semantic description of these causative constructions focusing both on the common and diverging underlying meanings of the different realisational alternatives. Attention will be pthe specificities of working in a multilingual environment. I will concentrate on the so-called analytic (or periphrastic) causative construction and show how this particular type of causal realisation can baccounted for in a systemic framework, arguing that it is in fact realised interpersonally by grammatical metaphor.