Daardoor Dus! Effecten van Specificiteit en Subjectiviteit op de Verwerking van Connectieven

The connectives daardoor (as a result) and dus (so) can both mark forward causality in Dutch. However, they differ in specificity and subjectivity. Daardoor gives the reader a very specific instruction, since it can only mark objective cause/effect relations. Dus can not only mark subjective argument/claim relations, but also summaries and paraphrases. The specificity hypothesis predicts that relations marked with specific connectives will be processed faster than relations marked with less specific connectives. The subjectivity hypothesis predicts that subjective relations will be processed slower than objective relations, but that this difference will disappear when the subjectivity is marked in advance. Results of an eye tracking experiment were in line with the specificity hypothesis: reading times were longer for dus than for daardoor, even when the subjectivity was marked in advance. The results give an insight in how the characteristics of connectives affect discourse processing.