Coordinating conjunctions
Read the following sentences:
God made the country and man made the town.
I have not seen him since he was a boy.
In the first sentence, two independent clauses of equal importance are joined together by and. A conjunction which joins together two clauses of equal rank is called a coordinating conjunction.
In the second sentence since joins two clauses of unequal importance. I have not seen him is the main clause because it makes complete sense and can stand alone. Since he was a boy is a subordinate clause which modifies the verb have not seen in the main clause.
A conjunction that joins together clauses of unequal importance is called a subordinating conjunction.
Coordinating conjunctions
The chief coordinating conjunctions are and, but, or, nor, so, for, either…or, neither…nor. A coordinating conjunction usually connects sentence elements of the same grammatical clause: e.g. nouns with nouns, adverbs with adverbs, phrases with phrases and clauses with clauses.
- Jack and Jill went up the hill. (Here the conjunction and joins the nouns Jack and Jill.)
- He worked diligently and patiently. (Here the conjunction and joins the adverbs diligently and patiently.)
- He is slow but he is steady. (Here the conjunction but joins the clauses ‘he is slow’ and ‘he is steady’.)
There are mainly four kinds of coordinating conjunctions:
- Cumulative or copulative
- Adversative
- Alternative
- Illative
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