Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

3. The Conjunction
Semantic features
Every conjunction has its own meaning, expressing some connection or other existing between phenomena in extralinguistic reality.
When discussing prepositions, we noted that in a certain number of cases the
use of a given preposition is predicted by the preceding word: thus the verb depend
can only be followed by the preposition on (or upon), the adjective characteristic only by the preposition of, etc. In such cases the preposition has no meaning of its own. Conjunctions in this respect are entirely different. Their meaning is independent of preceding words.
Syntactic features
Two levels are distinguished — that of phrases and that of sentences.
On the phrase level it must be said that conjunctions connect words and
phrases. It is the so-called co-ordinating conjunctions that are found here, and only
very rarely subordinating ones.
On the sentence level it must be said that conjunctions connect clauses (of
different kinds). Here we find both so-called co-ordinating and so-called
subordinating conjunctions.
In comparing prepositions with co-ordinating and subordinating
conjunctions we cannot fail to notice that while prepositions have nothing in
common with co-ordinating conjunctions, some prepositions are very close in
meaning to subordinating conjunctions, and in some cases a preposition and a
subordinating conjunction sound exactly the same.
It should also be noted that the difference between prepositions and
conjunctions is much less pronounced in Modern English than in Russian, where
prepositions are closely connected with cases, while conjunctions have nothing
whatever to do with them. In English, with its almost complete absence of cases,
this difference between prepositions and conjunctions is very much obliterated.
4. The Particle
Particles usually refer to the word (or, sometimes, phrase) immediately
following and give special prominence to the notion expressed by this word (or
phrase), or single it out in some other way, depending on the meaning of the
particle.
The question of the place of a particle in sentence structure remains
unsolved. The following three solutions are possible:
(1) a particle is a separate secondary member of the sentence, which should
be given a special name;
(2) a particle is an element in the part of the sentence which is formed by the
word (or phrase) to which the particle refers (thus the particle may be an element
of the subject, predicate, object, etc.);
(3) a particle neither makes up a special part of the sentence, nor is it an
element in any part of the sentence; it stands outside the structure of the sentence
and must be neglected when analysis of a sentence is given.
Each of these three views entails some difficulties and none of them can be
proved to be the correct one, so that the decision remains arbitrary.