Languages & Linguistics
Conjunction
A conjunction is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses in a sentence. It is used to join elements of equal importance and can indicate relationships such as addition, contrast, or cause and effect. Common conjunctions include "and," "but," and "or."
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7 Key excerpts on "Conjunction"
eBook - PDF- Ahmar Mahboob, Naomi K. Knight(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
They have long constituted a knotty problem for grammatical description, the psychology of reading, text linguistics, pragmatics and dis-course analysis. We distinguish here between: a. Coordinating Conjunctions ( and, or, but ); b. Subordinating Conjunctions ( before, because, although ); and c. Conjunctive adjuncts ( meanwhile, moreover, therefore, however ). 202 Appliable Linguistics Coordinating and subordinating Conjunctions are sentence-level structural items marking logico-semantic relations between clauses. Conjunctive adjuncts, on the other hand, have a discourse-level, text-building function. In Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) they represent a subset of discourse markers, and are said to mark Discourse Relations (see Taboada, 2006). Other kinds of discourse markers are words like well, now, okay (Schiffrin, 1987) and evaluative terms like frankly, unfortunately , etc. In this chapter I continue the older tradition (see Crewe, 1990; Hyland, 2004; etc.) by referring to conjunctive adjuncts as logical connectives . In systemic-functional grammar, interclausal relations made explicit by con-junctive adjuncts are described as the logico-semantic relations (Halliday, 1994, pp. 193, 196, etc.). Relations between clauses are interpreted in terms of the ‘logical’ component of the linguistic system (Halliday, 1994, p. 193). However, Halliday and Hasan (1976) had much earlier emphasized that the connections between sentences (and clauses) ‘depend in the last resort on the meanings that sentences express’ (p. 238), suggesting that these connections are to a considerable extent semantic. 12.3 Under-specication, Polysemy and Ambiguity Coordinating Conjunctions regularly under-specify logico-semantic relations: they are polysemous, and hence potentially ambiguous .
eBook - ePub- Hadumod Bussmann, Kerstin Kazzazi, Gregory Trauth, Kerstin Kazzazi, Gregory Trauth(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Nor do both parts of the proposition necessarily have to be semantically related, that is, be in a communicatively relevant relation. The term ‘Conjunction’ refers both to the function of the two-place sentence operator and as well as to the resulting proposition defined by it. With the aid of set theory, Conjunction can be characterized semantically as the intersection set of both model sets that make the connected propositions true (⇒ set). 4 Synonym for logical connective (⇒ also formal logic) conjunctive ⇒ co-ordination conjunctive adverb Adverb which occurs as an independent constituent before the finite verb and which has a co-ordinating function, e.g. so in It was raining, so we stayed at home. Conjunctive adverbs can have other semantic and syntactic functions besides co-ordination, such as particles or adverbials. connecting vowel ⇒ linking vowel connection 1 In the syntactic model of L.Tesnière’s dependency grammar, a syntactic relation that denotes the abstract dependency relation between syntactic elements regardless of their linear surface order. The set of all connections constitutes the sentence. Thus, Figaro swears not only consists of the sum of the elements (a) Figaro and (b) swears, but also of (c) the abstract connection that relates the two to each other. In the framework of Tesnière’s model, connection is the basic structural relationship between the elements of a sentence, which are represented in a tree diagram by directed branches. Additional semantic connections are marked by dotted lines: Philip loses his magic wand. References ⇒ dependency grammar 2 The joining of propositions or illocutions by causal, temporal, disjunctive, or other relationships. The relationship can be expressed by a connective or by another asyndetic (⇒ asyndeton) expression. Connection is an important means of cohesion and coherence of texts. References Charolles, M. et al. (eds) 1986. Research in text connexity and text coherence: a survey
eBook - PDFSentence Conjunctions in the Gospel of Matthew
kai, de, tote, gar, oun and Asyndeton in Narrative Discourse
- Stephanie Black(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Sheffield Academic Press(Publisher)
25 Traditional Grammarians At the risk of reading later linguistic issues back into earlier grammatical studies, a range of minimalist and maximalist perspectives can be observed in the different treatments of sentence Conjunctions in the standard reference grammars for the Greek of the New Testament, although the role of context tends to be underdeveloped. Taking something very close to a maximalist approach, Winer writes, 'Conjunctions...are divided into classes according to the kind of connexion expressed. These classes are the same in every cultivated language, and are eight in number.' 26 When Blass, Debrunner and Funk state that coordinating Conjunctions may be categorized 'according to the relationships they imply' as copulative, disjunctive, adversative, consecutive, causal or concessive, they also appear to assign the major role in determining the relationship between clauses to the Conjunction itself. 27 On the other hand, Dana and Mantey claim that KQI is usually 'a mere colorless copulative giving no additional meaning to the words preceding or following', expressing, at least for KOU, a strongly minimalist viewpoint similar to that of Halliday and Hasan. 28 At the same time they acknowledge that some Conjunctions do add a modest amount of meaning to propositions: 'The meaning of a sentence following a Conjunction, and often times of a whole paragraph, is suggested or colored by the connective'. 29 Robertson seems to say that rather than 'suggesting' or 'coloring' relations between clauses, Conjunctions make those relationships explicit: 'The Greeks, especially in the literary style, felt the propriety of indicating the inner relation of the various independent sentences that composed a paragraph. This was not merely an artistic device, but a logical expression of coherence of 25. Dik, Coordination, p. 251. 26. Winer, Treatise, p. 541.
eBook - PDF- Frede Jensen(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
IX: THE Conjunction Conjunctions vs. Adverbs and Prepositions 987. It is not as easy as it may seem to establish any rigorous division between adverbs and Conjunctions, and historically some adverbs have evolved to become Conjunctions as is the case for example with Fr. pourtant and cepen-dant. For Occitan, we may note the use of epois with the Conjunctional value of 'even though' (§ 1074). There is one feature, however, that may serve to separate the two categories, namely word order: a Conjunction is usually placed at the beginning of the clause, while the adverb suffers no such restrictions. Since coordinating Conjunctions may serve not only as a link between two separate clauses, but also between two sentence elements, it follows that some confusion between Conjunctions and prepositions may also arise. There is no intrinsic difference between lo reis e sa gens 'the king and his people' and lo reis ab sa gen 'the king with his people', to the point where the two may be treated alike in respect to grammatical agreement as seen in § 699. Coordination vs. Subordination 988. While this division poses few problems, the two types of clauses are not structurally different from one another, and subordination is a misnomer in the sense that it is often the subordinate clause that contains the chief idea expressed. Basically, subordination links two clauses more closely together than coordination, but with a Conjunction such as car, which may assume either role, it is often impossible to decide on the exact nature of the clause it intro-duces (§ 1006, 1020, 1046, 1072). Conjunctions of Coordination 989. Lat. et is continued as e, et or ez 'and', the latter originally an an-tevocalic form.
eBook - PDF- Robert Freidin(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
The definition of a language as a mental lexicon plus a computational system in the mind of the speaker provides a solid basis for defining language. From this perspective, language is what languages share in common: general properties of the computational system and the lexicon, properties that appear Coda 51 to be universal for humans. To the extent that such properties cannot be specified solely in terms of what is overt in speech (primarily phonetic form), they would otherwise have to constitute an innate faculty of language, which guides the acquisition of a language and determines both its essential nature and its use. Under this definition of language, linguistics becomes the study of the faculty of language, a part of human biology. Therefore, linguistics is con- cerned with the essential nature of language (and languages) – including how they vary, the acquisition of languages by individuals, the origin of language in the species, and how knowledge of a language is put to use. The use of the Conjunction and in the course title is what creates the ambiguity of the title. This reveals that and can be easily misused in writing to create unintended ambiguity. The chapter also considers how it can create both redundancy (in the form of overlapping conjuncts) and vagueness (when the relation between conjuncts is actually stronger than simple coordination). In this way, the misuse of and produces three hallmarks of poor writing: ambiguity, redundancy, and vagueness. With this understanding, one simple way of improving the clarity of your writing is to edit out such ands. 52 Introduction to Language and Linguistics
eBook - PDFContrast
Adversative and Concessive Relations and their Expressions in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese on Sentence and Text Level
- Elisabeth Rudolph(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
1. Contrast, its linguistic manifestation and investigations Contrast is one of those general conceptions we all are acquainted with, every-one having particular experiences and images correlated with it. Contrast is absolutely not a linguistic term. But exactly because of its general meaning it serves best in the title of this book. Two linguistic concepts — adversativity and concessivity — are bound together by the common feature of contrast, although they are quite different in their expressions and applications in the standard versions of the four Indo-European languages investigated. Three of these lan-guages — English, Spanish and Portuguese — are not only spoken in Europe and have undergone several particular phases of development during the last centuries, but in their basic syntactic structure they preserved the European patterns, especially in sentence connection. The fourth language, German, is the author's basis of thinking, it being her mother tongue. The introduction will supply the reader with some information on the object and material of investigation, beginning with the surface structure of the expres-sions, and completed by some notes on the terminology used here. Considera-tions on a more practical level have promoted the decision of presenting the tables of connectives at the very beginning. The reader may easily turn back to the tables searching for a special connective or expression. Because of the large number of contrastive connectives all general considerations and theoretical dis-cussions will be explained by examples containing the most frequent connec-tives, which does not mean, however, that other connectives cannot be used in the respective case. Taking the most frequent connective as a quasi-macro-con-nective is widespread in the linguistic literature.
- Keith Allan, Julie Bradshaw, Geoffrey Finch(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
Sentences may consist of one clause or more. In Chomskyan linguistics, clauses are normally dubbed sentences, the single clause sentence being a simple sentence. A sentence with more than one clause is compound if the constituent clauses are linked by Conjunctions e.g. (2) Jack went up the hill and Jill followed him. 3 key terms and concepts in linguistics 230 (3) Harry chose the fish but Sue preferred the steak. The sentence is complex if it contains subordinate clauses, e.g. (4) When Sue called , Harry was out because he needed to buy a screwdriver. (5) I sang while he played the piano . (6) If you sing I will play the piano. Sentences have the structure described for clauses (see that entry). Further reading: Börjars, Kersti and Kate Burridge 2001. Introducing English Grammar . London: Edward Arnold. Sinclair, John McH. (ed.) 1990. Collins COBUILD English Grammar . London: Collins. Stainton, Robert J. 2006. Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Van Valin, Robert D. Jr 2001. An Introduction to Syntax . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Valin, Robert D. Jr and Randy LaPolla 1997. Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sign, signifier, and signified The term sign is frequently used by people studying communi-cation theory to characterize the way in which meaning is communicated symbolically, via certain objects within individual cultures; thus the Cross operates as a sign within Christian cultures. The study of signs is semiotics . Not surprisingly, linguistics has been influenced by semiotics to the extent that words are sometimes described as linguistic signs. It’s not difficult to see the connection here because it can be argued that words represent the world in a symbolic rather than a literal way, and that understanding these symbolic relationships is what distinguishes speakers from non-speakers of a language.
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