Conjunctive Adverbs and Subordinating Conjunctions - studentwebs ...

Lyons 1Mary LyonsDr. RendlemanEnglish 517627 July 2012Conjunctive Adverbs and Subordinating Conjunctions:The writer’s tools to giving a paper flowThe research paper entitled “America’s Guilt: Realizing the truth behind Hate Crimes inGwendolyn Brook’s poetry” that I wrote for the “Writing for the English Major” class I took lastsummer is one of the best papers I have written. The paper acts in two parts. The paper firstexplains the meaning of one of Brook’s most prevalent ballads entitled “A Bronzeville MotherLoiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.” The other main pointrevolved around the significance in why Brooks wrote her ballad using fairy-tale language andwhy Brooks wrote from the perspective that she selected. I enjoyed writing the paper andreceived an “A” for my effort. Now that I have almost completed English Grammar 1, I am ableto clearly identify some of the reasons why my paper received a good grade. One reason inparticular was that my paper flowed. The repetitive use of conjunctive adverbs and subordinatingconjunctions allowed me to achieve smooth transitions between sentences throughout my paper.Conjunctive adverbs are used the most, grammatical speaking, when connecting twoseparate ideas. They are similar to regular conjunctions such as “and,” “but,” or “or.” However,conjunctive adverbs are defined as words that join separate ideas together by making them seemequal, and they are characterized by their movability, as seen with adverbials (Funk and Kolln280). Note that they do not function as adverbials but as sentence connectors (Funk and Kolln280). The textbook from our grammar class, “Understanding Grammar,” has a list of the most

Lyons 2commonly used conjunctive adverbs and adverbial prepositional phrases. The book breaks themdown into eight categories including the following: “results, concession, apposition, addition,time, contrast, summary, and reinforcement” (Funk and Kolln 280). Some conjunctive adverbswithin the list are “therefore, consequently, as a result, nevertheless, for example, moreover,furthermore, meanwhile, however, instead, thus, in particular etc.” (Funk and Kolln 280).I noticed that in my paper, I often used conjunctive adverbs from the “addition category”to give my paper flow. The words from the “addition category” that I used the most include“also, “likewise,” and “further.” Primarily, I used these words to add on to previously statedinformation, but more importantly to stress that the two separate ideas were equal. One instanceof this occurring in my paper is seen when I used “likewise” to say, “The speaker’s guilt spreadsthroughout the poem to the point where it consumes the speaker. Likewise, if America doesn’tchange their actions, guilt has the potential to spread and consume the country.” Through the useof “likewise,” I wanted my audience to realize that the speaker was America and the guilt theAmericans felt was the same guilt the speaker felt. If I had simply wrote “The speaker’s guiltspreads throughout the poem to the point where it consumes the speaker. If America doesn’tchange their actions, guilt has the potential to spread and consume the country,” the secondsentence would almost seem unrelated. And without the transitioning word at the beginning, thesentence would still sound incomplete, as if it needed “too” or “also” at the end. Conjunctiveadverbs allowed me to connect similar independent thoughts that, at the same time, provided myreaders smooth transitioning.Another way I provided transitioning to assists in the ease of reading for my audiencewas my use of subordinating conjunctions. Subordinating conjunctions are defined asconjunctions that join separate ideas together with a purpose of emphasizing one idea over the

Lyons 3other. Similarly to conjunctive adverbs, they can be one word or a phrase and are often located atthe beginning or end of the main clause. Unlike conjunctive adverbs, they are not moveable.Once it moves, they are no longer considered a conjunction but a coordinator. “Thecoordinators—the conjunctive adverbs as well as the coordinating conjunctions—introduce onlythe second clause” (Funk and Kolln 281). To further emphasize their point, our grammar bookuses the word “because” as example. In the sentence “We decided to walk because we hadmissed the last bus,” the word “because” is used as a coordinator since the word introduces thesecond clause (Funk and Kolln 281). But when used in the sentence, “Because we had missed thelast bus, we decided to walk,” the word “because” acts as a conjunction since introduces the firstclause (Funk and Kolln 281). Another main difference between the two terms is thatsubordinating conjunctions focuses on drawing relationships through comparison insteadequality. They are also determined by their rule of combining separate ideas in which one of theideas has to be an independent or dependent clause. Subordinating Conjunctions are alsocharacterized into eight categories including: “time, concession, contingency, condition, reason,result, comparison, and contrast” (Funk and Kolln 281). The following is a list of the most wellknownsubordinating conjunctions: “when, whenever, after, until, though, although, even though,in case, as long as, because, since, so that, as just, as if, while and whereas” (Funk and Kolln280).I emphasized comparisons in my paper through the use of subordinating conjunctionsmainly from the “time category.” More specifically, I frequently used “when,” “after,” “as,”“once,” “since,” and “while.” As the definition mentioned above, these words are used to drawrelationships in terms of comparisons through cause and effect. One example from my paper waswhen I wrote, “Hate crimes have existed for a while, but guilt only began to occur when the

Lyons 4people witnessed the brutality publicized by media.” The emphasis is seen after the first comma,but I really drove my point home with the dependent clause, “when the people witnessed thebrutality publicized by media.” I wanted my readers to make the connection between theawareness of hate crimes with publicized media—one only occurred because of the other. If“when” was taken out, the separate ideas could stand alone, but they would seem disconnected.The sentences would lack the transitioning needed to make the two ideas flow: “Hate crimeshave existed for a while. People witnessed the brutality publicized by media, and began to feelguilt.” The relationship between the two ideas in the revised sentence is harder to connect andwould most likely go unrecognizable.The consequences to not having subordinating conjunctions or conjunctive adverbs faroutweigh the benefits. With them, my paper was able to flow smoothly together, and allowed meto express my points effectively. While they both mainly function to connect two separate ideas,conjunctive adverbs give emphasis and show relationship through equality, while subordinatingconjunctions convey relationships in a manner of comparison through cause and effect. In myfuture writings, I plan on continuing to use them. But now that I am able to identify them andtheir use, I will concentrate on using a variety instead of the ones I usually use.

Lyons 5Works Cited PageFunk, Robert and Martha Kolln. Understanding English Grammar. Upper Saddle River:Pearson Education, Inc. 2012. Print.