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For example, after is a preposition in "he left after the fight" but a conjunction in "he left after they fought". In general, a conjunction is an invariant (non-inflecting) grammatical particle that stands between conjuncts. A conjunction may be placed at the beginning of a sentence, [1] but some superstition about the practice persists. [2]
A sentence consisting of at least one dependent clause and at least two independent clauses may be called a complex-compound sentence or compound-complex sentence. Sentence 1 is an example of a simple sentence. Sentence 2 is compound because "so" is considered a coordinating conjunction in English, and sentence 3 is complex.
Coordinators are a subset of conjunctions, a broader category that also includes subordinators. While coordinators connect elements of equal syntactic importance, subordinators mark clauses as subordinate. Both coordinators and subordinators function to connect elements within a sentence, but they do so with different syntactic and semantic roles.
An example of a correlative conjunction can be seen in: Not only did I finish my homework, but I also helped my sibling. Subordinators make relations between clauses, making the clause in which they appear into a subordinate clause. [35] Some common subordinators in English are: conjunctions of time, including after, before, since, until, when ...
In the following example sentences, independent clauses are underlined, and conjunctions are in bold. Single independent clauses: I have enough money to buy an ice cream cone. My favourite flavour is chocolate. Let's go to the shop. Multiple independent clauses: I have enough money to buy an ice cream cone; my favourite flavour is chocolate.
Two examples of the sort of apparatus that has been posited are so-called conjunction reduction and right node raising (RNR). [6] [7] Conjunction reduction is an ellipsis mechanism that takes non-constituent conjuncts to be complete phrases or clauses at some deep level of syntax. These complete phrases or clauses are then reduced down to their ...
References on English usage strongly criticize the phrase as "ugly" [2] and "Janus-faced". [4] William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White, in their classic The Elements of Style–recognized by Time one of the 100 best and most influential non-fiction books written in English since 1923, [6] say and/or is "A device, or shortcut, that damages a sentence and often leads to confusion or ambiguity". [3]
A famous example for lexical ambiguity is the following sentence: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.", meaning "When flies fly behind flies, then flies fly in pursuit of flies." [40] [circular reference] It takes advantage of some German nouns and corresponding verbs being homonymous. While not noticeable ...