CUZ Causal conjunctions
Definition
Conjunctions expressing cause/reason: because, therefore, hence, thus, consequently, etc.
Detection Rules
Default causal conjunctions rule (based on MFTE). Refines IN and RB.
cql[word={words} & pos="IN|RB"]
Word list (9 items)
because
consequently
cos
coz
cus
cuz
hence
therefore
thus
mfte
MFTE also has “thanks to” (multi-word) and “so...that” (distant). “accordingly” and “since” are in Biber but not MFTE’s CUZ rule.
cql[word={words} & pos="IN|RB"]
Word list (9 items)
because
consequently
cos
coz
cus
cuz
hence
therefore
thus
pybiber
pybiber counts “because” where the next token is not “of”, excluding the prepositional phrase “because of”.
cql[word="because"] [word!="of"]
Normalization
Per finite_verbs
Examples
He was scared because of the costume.
Source: le_foll_2024
Sources
- biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
- mfte — Le Foll, Elen & Shakir, Muhammad (2023/2025) : Multi-Feature Tagger of English (MFTE) — Python version
- pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
- xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
- grieve_2023 — Grieve, Jack (2023) : Register variation explains stylometric authorship analysis
- bohmann_2019 — Bohmann, Axel (2019) : Variation in English Worldwide: Varieties and Genres in a Quantitative Perspective
Notes
Biber called this “causative subordination” (because).