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The Semantics of Relationships pp 51–70Cite as

The Many Facets of the Cause-Effect Relation

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Part of the book series: Information Science and Knowledge Management ((ISKM,volume 3))

Abstract

This chapter presents a broad survey of the cause-effect relation, with particular emphasis on how the relation is expressed in text. Philosophers have been grappling with the concept of causation for centuries. Researchers in social psychology have found that the human mind has a very complex mechanism for identifying and attributing the cause for an event. Inferring cause-effect relations between events and statements has also been found to be an important part of reading and text comprehension, especially for narrative text. Though many of the cause-effect relations in text are implied and have to be inferred by the reader, there is also a wide variety of linguistic expressions for explicitly indicating cause and effect. In addition, it has been found that certain words have “causal valence”—they bias the reader to attribute cause in certain ways. Cause-effect relations can also be divided into several different types.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Advanced Information Systems, School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

    Christopher Khoo, Syin Chan & Yun Niu

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  1. Christopher Khoo
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  2. Syin Chan
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

    Rebecca Green

  2. Extramural Programs, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Carol A. Bean

  3. Natural Language and Information Retrieval Laboratory, Division of Information and Communication, College of Engineering, Chungnam National University, Taejon, Korea

    Sung Hyon Myaeng

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Khoo, C., Chan, S., Niu, Y. (2002). The Many Facets of the Cause-Effect Relation. In: Green, R., Bean, C.A., Myaeng, S.H. (eds) The Semantics of Relationships. Information Science and Knowledge Management, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0073-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0073-3_4

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