Misconstruing Concessive Condition As Concessive Cause

Martin & Rose (2007: 128):

In the introduction to this chapter we saw that ordinary conjunctions such as then can signal counterexpectancy in certain contexts. But for consequential conjunctions this is a regular option, so that specific sets of conjunctions realise each type of counterexpectant consequence. These are known as concessive conjunctions. … Concessive cause is realised by although, even though, even if, but, however.

For example Helena’s marriage failed all because she married for the wrong reasons, but it could have failed even though she married for the right reasons:

An extremely short marriage to someone else failed
even though I married for the right reasons.

Helena’s first love was popular with the Afrikaners even if he was an Englishman; in a more tolerant South Africa he might have been popular because he was an Englishman:

Because he was an Englishman,
he was popular with all the 'Boer' Afrikaners.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is the relation of concessive condition (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 478) in the grammatical system of clause complexing, misunderstood as concessive cause, and rebranded as discourse semantics.

The meaning of cause (reason) is

• 'because P so result Q', 

whereas the meaning of concessive condition is

• 'if P then contrary to expectation Q'.

Conditional statements are not statements of causality. An important distinction is that statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time, whereas conditional statements do not require this temporal order.

[2] To be clear, the meaning of An extremely short marriage to someone else failed all because I married for the wrong reasons is

• because I married for the wrong reasons so an extremely short marriage to someone else failed

whereas the meaning of An extremely short marriage to someone else failed even though I married for the right reasons is

• if I married for the right reasons then contrary to expectation an extremely short marriage to someone else failed.

[3] To be clear, liking someone because of their nationality or ethnic identity is not tolerance, but racial discrimination. Cf Because he was an Aryan, he was popular with the National Socialist Germans; Because she was not Aryan, she was not popular with the National Socialist Germans.