move because she had heard of Buggsy’s reputation—the subordinate clause
supplies information of causality. Formal standard usage requires a match be-
tween the semantic content of the subordinating conjunction and the
modification provided by the subordinate clause.
The lack of a match has become very widespread, however. Not only in
conversation but also in published texts, it is common to find incongruence
with respect to time, causality, and contrast. Most people use a temporal
subordinator where a causal and/or contrastive subordinator is required. Con-
sider these sentences:
- ?The President gave the ordersince he is commander-in-chief.
- ?Rita de Luna wanted to leave,while Buggsy wanted her to stay.
In sentence 69, the relation between the two clauses is one of reason, not
time, so standard usage requires the following:
69a. The President gave the orderbecausehe is commander-in-chief.In sentence 70, the relation between the two clauses is contrastive, not tem-
poral, so formal standard usage requires the following:
70a. Rita de Luna wanted to leave,whereasBuggsy wanted her to stay.In addition to these concerns, there is another instance of nonstandard usage
that has become remarkably widespread. Consider the following scenario: At a
school board meeting, a local principal is explaining why her school needs to
have Internet access:
- Of course, you want to know why our students need access to the Internet.
The reason is because everyone says that it’s important.
If we look carefully at the italicized sentence, we see that the main part con-
sists of a noun-phrase subject, the linking verbis,and a subordinate clause that
begins with the subordinating conjunctionbecause.However, linking verbs
cannot be followed by subordinate clauses. As noted on page 77, they can be
followed only by a noun phrase, a predicate adjective, and a prepositional
phrase. Given the grammar and usage conventions we have outlined here, any
use ofthe reason is becausemust be deemed not only nonstandard but also un-
grammatical. The grammatical form would be:
88 CHAPTER 3