Causal Subordination in English and Norwegian

Causal relations are central to the way humans perceive and interpret the interplay between states of affairs in the everyday world. This is revealed in the multitude of forms the expression of a causal relationship can take in different languages. The purpose of the present article, which is based on my MA thesis (see Meier 2001), is to compare and contrast causal linkage in a corpus material of original and translated English and Norwegian texts. The main focus is on the various correspondences of English causal subordinators in Norwegian, and the correspondences of Norwegian causal subordinators in English; in other words, what happens when the causal links are translated from one language into the other? More specifically, I aim to answer the following questions: