Subj : Misinterprestation
To   : Wayne Harris
From : Ardith Hinton
Date : Thu Sep 10 2020 23:28:43

Hi, Wayne!  Recently you wrote in a message to Dallas Hinton:

WH>  So now I know that /but/ is an adversative conjunction.
WH>  That's great.


           Ah, I see you've done your homework.  I like that... [chuckle].



WH>  It seems there is a classification of sentences among
WH>  ``coordinating sentences'' and ``subordinating sentences''.
WH>  Is that correct?


           I think you're on the right track.  According to my GAGE CANADIAN DICTIONARY conjunctions may be co-ordinating, subordinating, or correlative.


             "And", "but", and "or" (e.g.) are co-ordinating conjunctions.
             They join elements which are grammatically equal & they don't
             suggest any one is more important than another.

             "Because", "whereas", and "although" (e.g.) are subordinating
             conjunctions.  They suggest one idea... the idea not preceded
             by the conjunction... is more important than the other.  I am
             reminded here of a girl I knew in high school who broke a leg
             during the Christmas holidays... when, as she confided to me,
             she fell down the basement stairs.  She let other folks think
             she'd had a skiing accident, because the fashionable crowd at
             this school liked expen$ive sports.  The main ideas here are,
             AFAIC, that she broke a leg & others made assumptions.

             Correlative conjunctions, such as "(n)either... (n)or" & "not
             only... but also" are used in pairs.  Some grammarians regard
             these as a variety of co-ordinating conjunctions.


           Anything which could stand on its own as a sentence... because it includes a subject & predicate... is regarded as a clause when it's combined with similar elements.  I reckon that's +/- what you had in mind there.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)

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