Connectives

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 476.

§469. Connectives are linking-words considered as a second­ary part of the sentence. They are mostly prepositions and conjunctions.

She played and sang to him. (London).

Connectives differ from the previously mentioned second­ary parts of a simple sentence in not being, as a rule, adjuncts of certain head-words.

a) They usually connect two words both or neither of which might be regarded as their head-words;

b) The words they connect belong to various parts of speech. With conjunctions this refers to both right-hand and left-hand connections (see § 358). With prepositions it refers chiefly to their left-hand connections (see § 347), but even on their right they are attached not only to nouns, but also to pronouns, gerunds, complexes.

§ 470. Speaking about various combinations of units within a sentence H. Kufner writes: "The above three types of structure can all be regarded as examples of expansion, in which each phrase as a whole still performs the same function as its center ¹ or centers. Quite different is the fourth type of structure, in which the phrase as a whole functions differently from either of its two parts ... German (like English) has three types of centerless phrases:

1) Preposition-object: with me, from here, in a factory,

2) Subject-predicate: he's coming,

3) Subordinating conjunction-subordinate clause" ².

As we see, predications apart, only prepositions and con­junctions form combinations that cannot be regarded as a centre (in a simple sentence it is a head-word) and its adjunct. Using the terminology of A. Martinet (see 'note', p. 240) we may say that prepositional and conjunctional phrases are centrifugal, not centripetal.

We have to disagree with H. Kufner on one point only. We make no distinction (with regard to the problem discussed) between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. In our opinion and John, or Mary are as centreless or centrifugal as with John, to Mary. Of course, if we use both connections of a conjunction, the resulting combination (boys and girls) with two centres (or head-words) can substitute for one of its head-words. But it is similar with prepositions: A garden of roses can substitute for a garden, and go to Moscow can replace go.

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¹ What we call the head-word.

² Op. cit.