Topic 25: Relaciones de causa, consecuencia y finalidad.

TOPIC 25: Relaciones de causa, consecuencia y finalidad.

1. Introduction
2. Conjunctions
3. Expressing reason or cause
4. Expressing result
5. Expressing purpose
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography

1. Introduction
The most common way to express among human beings does not just
consists of speaking or writing in simple sentences but of joining some
ideas together. This is called discourse. For instance, “Wise men speak
because they have something to say, fools because they have to say
something” stated Plato. From that example we can observe that
conjunctions are used to connect ideas in order to help people understand
them and to make what we say sound more interesting. In this example,
the conjunction “because” expresses cause.
So, in order to express causality, which is the main point of the topic, I
will talk about conjunctions.
The concepts of cause, result and purpose are intimately related and
have to be treated together because in the same way as there is an
obvious relationship between cause and result, there is also a relation
between purpose and result and purpose and reason.

2. Conjunctions
Conjunctions are words that join two parts of a speech. They have
three basic forms:
-Single forms: “because, so, and, since”.
-Compound forms: “as long as, provided that, in order that”.
- Correlatives (which surround an adverb or adjective): “so.. that,
such..that”.

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We can also find two basic types: coordinating and subordinating

conjunctions:
1-Coordinating: the 7 coordinating conjunctions are short and simple
words. They have only two or three letters and there is an easy way to
remember them by an invented word with their initials spell: FANBOYS:
“for, and, not, but, or , yet, so”.
A coordinating conjunction shows that the elements it joins are similar
in importance and structure: “It was raining so we didn’t go for a walk”.
Regarding their position, they always come between the words or
clauses that they join. E.g.: “We went to the shop to buy some food but it
was closed”.
As far as punctuation is concerned, when a coordinating conjunction
joins independent clauses, it is always correct to place a comma before
the conjunction as in “It was Mary who arrived late yesterday, not me”.
However, if the independent clauses are short and well- balanced, a
comma is not essential: “She is kind so she helps people”.
2- Subordinating conjunctions: They join a subordinate dependent
clause to a main clause. The biggest amount of conjunctions belongs to
that group and some of the most common ones are “after, although,
because, if, that, how, since, until”, etc.
Their position always comes at the beginning of a subordinate clause,
that is, it introduces a subordinate clause. However, a subordinate clause
can sometimes come after and sometimes before the main clause. We can
either say “I didn’t go to the party because I was ill” or “Because I was ill,
I didn’t go to the party”.

3. Expressing reason or cause

When we express reason or cause is because we want to explain why
something happens or to express a justification for something. We can use
a wide range of devices to express cause and most of them have the same
meaning as “because”, although ones are used in more formal settings
than others. Let’s have a look at some of them:

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- 1.Coordinating conjunctions: Although they are not very common

to express cause, we can find some examples with “for” as “She
was looking all the better for her stay in hospital” or “We didn’t tell
Paul the bad news for not to worry him”.
- 2. With the preposition “with” meaning “because”, as in “With so
many people ill, I’ve decided to cancel the meeting”.
- 3. Prepositional phrases:
-With “because of”: “We won’t be able to come because
of the weather”.
-With “due to”: “She was unable to run due to a leg
injury”.
-With “owing to”: “We have less money to spend owing
to budget cuts” or “I must decline your invitation owing to a
subsequent engagement” (Oscar Wilde).
- With “on account of”: “We were unable to carry out the
experiment on account of the malfunction in the computer”.
“Because of” is more commonly used whereas “due to” and
“owing to” are normally used in more formal settings.
- Subordinating conjunctions: They are the most usual means to
express cause. Here we can use from the most simple ones such as
“because, as, since” to the most complex ones “due to the fact
that, as long as, inasmuch as”. Let’s see some examples:
-With “because”: “I’m such a good lover because I
practice a lot on my own” (Woody Allen) or “Giving up smoking is the
easiest thing in the world I know because I’ve done it thousands of
times” (Mark Twain).
-With “as”: “As it was getting late, I decided I should go home”.
-With “since”: “Since he was going to live in Sweden for some time, he
thought he should read something about the country”:
-With “seeing that”: “He just had to apologise seeing that he knew he
had made a mistake”.—---With “as long as”: “As long as you have the
time, why don’t you come for dinner? or “As long as a woman can look

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ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied”
(Oscar Wilde).
-With “inasmuch as”. This form is used in very formal or literary written
English. “Inasmuch as the students had successfully passed their
exams, their parents rewarded their efforts by giving them a trip to
London”.
-With “due to the fact that”: “We will be staying for an extra week due
to the fact that we haven’t finished yet”.
4. With the expression “somehow”: meaning for some reason or
other. It is used when the reason is not made explicit in the preceding
context and it differs from all other expressions as it does not indicate a
relationship between its clause and what precedes it: “Somehow it
seems like it’s you and me against the world” (Paul Williams).
5. With causative verbs: There are some verbs which denote cause
by themselves like “to originate” as in “Great ideas originate in the
muscles” (Thomas Alva Edison), “to cause” as in “Some cause
happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go” (Oscar Wilde),
“cause” as a noun can also be used “The cause of the collision was ice
on the road” “to be responsible for” as in “Gravitation cannot be held
responsible for people falling in love” (Albert Einstein), etc.
Finally, we can also express cause with clauses starting with the verbal
form “It is/was” followed by “that” (in this construction the use of
“because” is compulsory): “It was because she passed the exam with
flying colours that she was so happy”
Once we have seen the way to express reason or cause in English, let’s
see now how to express result.

4. Expressing result
Expressing result means expressing the consequence or the result of
something. In English, we can express result through:
1.Coordinating conjunctions: The most popular way to express result is
through the conjunction “so”: “The lecture was boring and irrelevant, so
some of the students began to fall asleep”. The coordinating conjunction
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“and” also shows result; in this case, the 2nd clause is a result of the 1st:
“They heard the explosion and they phoned the police”.
2. Subordinating conjunctions: we use the construction “so…that” to
link a cause with a result: “There were so many books on the subject that
she didn’t know where to begin”. In speech, “that” is often left out. We
can also use “such…that”: “It was such a long illness that I missed a lot of
classes”.
3. Sentence connectors or expressions: Among them we can mention:
- “Therefore” as in “I think therefore I am” (Descartes) or “God could
not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers” (Ruyard Kipling).
- “Thus”, which is considered more formal as in “Thus conscience
does make cowards of us all” (William Shakespeare).
- “As a result” as in “Let everyone try and find that as a result of
daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which
nothing can be compared” (Gandhi).
- “Consequently”: “I was ill. Consequently, I didn’t go to class”.
- “For this/that reason”: “I was ill and for that reason I didn’t go to
class”.
4. Resulting verbs: There are a series of verbs whose meaning is result.
For instance, “lead to” as in “The extra investment should lead to more
jobs”, “result in” as in “His remarks resulted in everyone getting angry”,
“bring about”, etc.
5. Other ways to express result: with the nouns “consequence” and
“result” as we can see in the following examples: “The consequence of all
these changes is that no-one is happy any more”, “I can never decide
whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts or my thoughts the
result of my dreams” (D.H Lawrence).
We could also mean result with adverbs like “just, already, at last”.
“I’ve just seen him”, “We’ve already spoken about that”, “At last we have
finished the report”.

5. Expressing purpose

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Expressing purpose means expressing the reason for which anything is

done. There are many devices but a common way to express purpose in
English is using a to-infinitive clause, especially when the subject of the
subordinate clause is the same person as the subject of the main clause:
“I travelled to England to improve my English skills” or “Women are meant
to be loved, not to be understood” (O. Wilde).
We usually use the preposition “for + noun” to talk about the purpose
of an action: “I’m saving for a new car”.
To talk about the purpose of a thing or to define it we use “for + ing”:
“This is good for getting rid of headaches”, “A tin opener is a tool for
opening tins”.
To talk about the use a person makes of something we use “To-
infinitive”: “She used a heavy book to keep the door open”.
To talk about purpose we can also use “in order to, so as to”: “He took
the course in order to get a better job”, “Trees are being planted by the
roadside so as to reduce traffic noise”. “so as to” is frequently used in
formal written English.
In formal writing, to introduce a purpose clause we can use “so that” or
“in order that”. These finite purpose clauses usually contain a modal: “Did
you give up your job in order that you could take care of your mother?”;
“She hit the present in order that the children wouldn’t find it”.
Purpose can also be expressed with expressions such as “with a view
to, with the aim of, for the purpose of”. When using them, we must make
sure that the verb is in the –ing form: “I’ve invited you here with a view to
resolving our differences”; “She wrote to the press with the aim of
exposing the scandal”. These sentences are quite formal and they are
more frequent in written English.
Other structures can be used, as for example, the use of “and” plus
some verbs like “Try and get some cream for the soup”, “Hurry up and get
dressed”.
Just as a final remark I consider important to mention the commonly
triple form of purpose sentences as this is something our Ss would see in
the classroom, I mean the three forms, “for, to, because”. They can be
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used independently in order to express purpose but the structure or

syntax of the sentence will change as it can be seen in the following
example: “Why did you go to the supermarket? Because I wanted some
food/ For some food/ To buy some food”. So, the form “because” is
followed by a clause, “for” precedes a noun phrase and the infinitive “to” is
followed by a verb.

6. Conclusion
As a conclusion of this topic I would like to point out that the concepts
of cause, result and purpose are very important in order to communicate
fluently in English.
So we, as teachers, should encourage our Ss to make use of them
when speaking or writing a composition because these connectors will help
them to express their ideas clearly. However, these kinds of connectors
and expressions will be learnt at different stages in education, that is to
say, in a graded way. This must be our aim as teachers, to make the
contents adequate to our students and not the other way round.
Explaining cause, result and purpose will improve our student’s
communicative competence.
Finally, we must also remember that our objective is not merely to
teach a language but to teach how to use it for communicative purposes.
Language, therefore, will be considered as a tool, not as an end in itself.
7. Bibliography
-Hewings, Advanced Grammar in Use CUP 1999
- McCarthy, M English Vocabulary in Use CUP 2001
- Quirk, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language Longman
1985
- www.brainyquote.com

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