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An -ing form is termed gerund when it behaves as a verb within a clause (so that it may be modified by an adverb or have an object); but the resulting clause as a whole (sometimes consisting of only one word, the gerund itself) functions as a noun within the larger sentence. For example, consider the sentence "Eating this cake is easy."
A conjunction may be placed at the beginning of a sentence, [1] but some superstition about the practice persists. [2] The definition may be extended to idiomatic phrases that behave as a unit and perform the same function, e.g. "as well as", "provided that".
There are certain transformations that can help distinguish these two cases. In the table that follows, the transformations produce grammatical sentences with similar meanings when applied to sentences with gerunds (since the transformations are based on the assumption that the phrase with the -ing word is a noun phrase). When applied to ...
A conjunction can be used to make a compound sentence. Conjunctions are words such as for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. Examples: I started on time, but I arrived late. I will accept your offer or decline it; these are the two options. The law was passed: from April 1, all cars would have to be tested.
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.
English subordinators (also known as subordinating conjunctions or complementizers) are words that mostly mark clauses as subordinate. The subordinators form a closed lexical category in English and include whether ; and, in some of their uses, if , that , for , arguably to , and marginally how .
English function words may be spelled with fewer than three letters; e.g., 'I', 'an', 'in', while non-function words usually are spelled with three or more (e.g., 'eye', 'Ann', 'inn'). The following is a list of the kind of words considered to be function words with English examples. They are all uninflected in English unless marked otherwise:
Words in one class can sometimes be derived from those in another. This has the potential to give rise to new words. For example, the noun aerobics has given rise to the adjective aerobicized. [3] Words combine to form phrases. A phrase typically serves the same function as a word from some particular word class. [3]