2.
0 INTRODUCTION
CONJUNCTIONS
Definition
Some words are satisfied spending an evening at home, alone, eating ice-cream
right out of the box, watching Seinfeld re-runs on TV, or reading a good book. Others
aren't happy unless they're out on the town, mixing it up with other words; they're joiners
and they just can't help themselves. A conjunction is a joiner, a word that connects
(conjoins) parts of a sentence.
Coordinating Conjunctions
The simple, little conjunctions are called coordinating conjunctions (you can click
on the words to see specific descriptions of each one):
Coordinating Conjunctions
and but or yet for nor so
PREPOSITIONS : LOCATORS IN TIME AND PLACE
A preposition describes a relationship between other words in a sentence. In itself, a
word like "in" or "after" is rather meaningless and hard to define in mere words. For
instance, when you do try to define a preposition like "in" or "between" or "on," you
invariably use your hands to show how something is situated in relationship to
something else. Prepositions are nearly always combined with other words in structures
called prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases can be made up of a million
different words, but they tend to be built the same: a preposition followed by a
determiner and an adjective or two, followed by a pronoun or noun (called the object of
the preposition). This whole phrase, in turn, takes on a modifying role, acting as an
adjective or an adverb, locating something in time and space, modifying a noun, or
telling when or where or under what conditions something happened.
Consider the professor's desk and all the prepositional phrases we can use while
talking about it.
You can sit before the desk (or in front of the desk). The professor can sit on the desk
(when he's being informal) or behind the desk, and then his feet are under the desk or
beneath the desk. He can stand beside the desk (meaning next to the desk), before
the desk, between the desk and you, or even on the desk (if he's really strange). If he's
clumsy, he can bump into the desk or try to walk through the desk (and stuff would fall
off the desk). Passing his hands over the desk or resting his elbows upon the desk, he
often looks across the desk and speaks of the desk or concerning the desk as if there
were nothing else like the desk. Because he thinks of nothing except the desk,
sometimes you wonder about the desk, what's in the desk, what he paid for the desk,
and if he could live without the desk. You can walk toward the desk, to the desk,
around the desk, by the desk, and even past the desk while he sits at the desk or
leans against the desk.
All of this happens, of course, in time: during the class, before the class, until the
class, throughout the class, after the class, etc. And the professor can sit there in a
bad mood [another adverbial construction].
Those words in bold blue font are all prepositions. Some prepositions do other things
besides locate in space or time — "My brother is like my father." "Everyone in the class
except me got the answer." — but nearly all of them modify in one way or another. It is
possible for a preposition phrase to act as a noun — "During a church service is not a
good time to discuss picnic plans" or "In the South Pacific is where I long to be" — but
this is seldom appropriate in formal or academic writing.
INTERJECTIONS
Interjections are words or phrases used to exclaim or protest or command. They
sometimes stand by themselves, but they are often contained within larger structures.
Wow! I won the lottery!
Oh, I don't know about that.
I don't know what the heck you're talking about.
No, you shouldn't have done that.
Most mild interjections are treated as parenthetical elements and set off from the
rest of the sentence with a comma or set of commas. If the interjection is more forceful,
however, it is followed with an exclamation mark. Interjections are rarely used in formal
or academic writing.
