Contextualizing the variation in causal clause ordering in Mandarin Chinese: a multifactorial analysis

Abstract The sequential ordering of causal clauses in Mandarin Chinese displays variation, with reason connectives (e.g., yīnwèi , yóuyú ) appearing either before or after the main clause (sentence-initial vs. sentence-medial positions). However, the interplay of syntactic, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic factors shaping causal clause ordering remains underexplored. This study addresses the gap through a corpus-based multifactorial analysis of spoken Mandarin, employing mixed-effects regression modeling. Our findings reveal that syntactic parsing factors, including clause length and complexity, influence clause positioning. Longer subordinate clauses favor sentence-medial ordering of reason connectives, while the interaction between main clause length and its complexity shows that simpler but longer main clauses favor sentence-medial placement. Semantically, emotional valence plays a role: positive subordinate clauses prefer sentence-medial positioning, while the emotional valence of main clauses interacts with genre. Specifically, neutral valence in dialogues and positive valence in monologues favor sentence-medial positioning, whereas negative valence in dialogues least favors it. Discourse-pragmatic factors further condition causal clause ordering. The presence of yīnwèi and the absence of suǒyǐ jointly favor sentence-medial positioning of reason connectives. This study provides novel insights into the multifaceted factors influencing causal clause ordering in Mandarin Chinese, thereby enhancing our understanding of sentence structure and discourse cohesion in the language.