Abstract
While acknowledging that different conjunctions define different relationships between ideas, this study focuses on the interpretation of four subordinating conjunctions, namely, because, since, for and as in causal clauses. Since the meanings of these conjunctions vary according to context, among other things, they usually pose problems to language users leading to misinterpretations. Not only does this emerge from the fine and minute distinctions in usage between them, but also due to the lack of adequate knowledge of the rules of language use in their metatheoretical framework. This kind of knowledge is crucial in interactive communication, speech acts, pragmatics, logical arguments and multidisciplinary debates. The data for this study were compiled from grammar books, articles, and from the British National Corpus (BNC). The data were analyzed not only to identify the discrete features of each conjunction that would render it different from its synonymous counterparts, but also to understand the kind of knowledge required to determine the choice. The findings of the study reveal that, in addition to the syntactic constraints, the degree of the ‘givenness’ or ‘newness’ of the information that the conjunction introduces, context, degree of formality of the register, and lexical density of the utterance that contains the conjunctions emerged to play a role.
Highlights
Subordinating conjunctions are defined as function words that show “the connection of meaning between the main clause and the subordinate clause” (Biber et al 2002, p. 31)
Causal clauses together with their subordinating conjunctions comprise two sentential elements signaling cause and effect, as in the following examples: (1) I stayed home today because I am not feeling well; (2) As the weather was nice, we decided to go jogging; (3) Since you did not work hard enough for the test, your grades were below average; (4) John was taken to the hospital for he has a severe migraine headache
Objective of the paper: This paper explores the salient uses of the four conjunctions, because, as, for and since, in light of syntactic, semantic, and contextual considerations
Summary
Subordinating conjunctions are defined as function words that show “the connection of meaning between the main clause and the subordinate clause” (Biber et al 2002, p. 31). They fall under different categories according to the functions they perform and the relationships they establish between sentential elements. Besides their function as a transitional link between two propositions in the sentence, denoting time, place, cause, and effect, they signal logical relationships between referring expressions, referents, and meaning. An interesting observation that these examples reveal is that the subordinating connecting words convey more or less the same meaning, i.e., they are synonymous.
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