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From: michael@brueer.UUCP (Michael Fourman)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: non-causal use of 'because'
Message-ID: <179@brueer.brueer.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Jun-85 14:56:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: brueer.179
Posted: Wed Jun 19 14:56:13 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 00:38:49 EDT
References: <568@hwcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: ukc!brueer!michael (Michael Fourman)
Followup-To: net.nlang
Organization: Dept of EE & E, Brunel University, Uxbridge, U.K.
Lines: 19
Keywords: because
Summary: Not 'Oxford English'
Xpath: reading gateway.cs

In article <568@hwcs.UUCP> greg@hwcs.UUCP (Greg Michaelson) writes:
>
>One might expect 'because' to be followed by a reason, as in:
>
> He ate the cake because he was hungry.
>
>However, its often used to imply a preceding 'I know that', as in:
>
> He ate the cake because my aunt told me =>
> I know he ate the cake because my aunt told me
>
>In such cases, the implied causality on an explicit interpretation is bogus.
>
>Any ideas as to how this use originated?

Don't know how it originated but over here its not a current usage. -It used
to bug me a lot when I lived in the US (that's another phrase unused here).

mike