Conjunctions

Conjunctions serve to connect words and phrases and clauses. Though they are functional words, some of them, like the prepositions, have their own lexical meaning: “He came because it was late.” And “He came though it was late.” The causal and the concessive connection between the events exist in extralinguistic reality, outside the language. As there is no difference in the grammatical structure of the two sentences, the difference lies only in the meaning of the two conjunctions.

Unlike prepositions, the use of conjunctions is never predicted by any preceding word.

There are co-ordinating (and, or, but, as well as, both…and, not only…but also, either…or, neither…nor, also, furthermore, moreover, similarly, besides) and subordinating conjunctions, classified according to the clauses they introduce: object: that, if, whether; time – after, as, as long as, as soon as, since, until (till), while, when; cause: as, because, for; condition: if, on condition, provided/providing, supposing, unless; purpose: lest, in order that; manner: as, as if, as though, so…that, such…that; comparison: as …as, not so…as, than; result: so that, therefore, thus, hence, so; concession: in spite of the fact that, despite, though, although, however, nevertheless.

On the phrase level conjunctions connect words and phrases: “Both the children and the adults enjoyed the celebration.” (co-ordinating)

On the sentence level conjunctions connect clauses of different kind (both co-ordinating and subordinating) “Hurry up or you will miss the train.” After the plane took off the hostess served the drinks.”

Sometimes subordinating conjunctions look exactly the same as prepositions or adverbs: He always comes before (after) I do. – before – conjunction; I’ll go there before dinner – preposition; I have seen this before – adverb.

The difference is in the syntactical function, and some linguists consider that this difference is not enough to classify them as different parts of speech, they offer to classify them as one class of connectives. The fact that one of them connects clauses, another expresses relations between the verb-predicate and the object, and the third functions the modifier of time of the action can be explained by different functions of the same word. But there is more logic in speaking of them as grammatical homonyms, as the most of the members of their classes are different words: During her illness – preposition, while she was ill – conjunction, I asked him, when she was ill – adverb, because it is a part of the sentence.