Delahunty and Garvey
Some complexities of subordinating conjunctions
Subordinating conjunctions have several properties that make them more
complicated than this basic presentation suggests. One that deserves men-
tion is the tendency of subordinating conjunctions to be omitted from sen-
tences in which their presence is easily inferred. Examples from each type
occur in (44).
(44) a. I am so tired [_____ I could sleep on a bed of nails.]
(SAC: so... that)
b. Everyone said [_____ they had a good time.]
(Nominal: that)
c. The reason [_____ she left] wasn’t clear.
(Relative: why or that)A note on that
Grammatically, that is particularly interesting, largely because it belongs to
at least four different parts of speech. First, it can be a demonstrative pro-
noun that functions either as a modifier (e.g., That answer is correct) or as
the head of a noun phrase (e.g., That is correct). Second, it can introduce a
relative clause (e.g., The answer that she gave was correct). Third, that can act
as a noun clause connector (e.g., I said that the answer was correct). Fourth,
it can appear as part of a subordinating adverbial conjunction indicating
either result or purpose (e.g., The answer was so persuasive that it astounded
us all. The answer was phrased so that it would confuse everyone).
So how can you determine which class that belongs to in a particular
sentence? One useful test is that of substitution. If you can substitute it for
that you have a headword demonstrative; if you can substitute the, you have
a modifying demonstrative; if you can substitute who or which for that, it
introduces a relative clause. If you cannot make any of these replacements,
you have either a noun clause connector or a SAC. Distinguishing the SAC
is very simple, since it occurs normally with the word so either next to it or
nearby.
Other minor parts of speech
While our catalogue of parts of speech includes nearly all the words of Eng-
lish, we should ask whether other categories might be identified. There is no
reason in principle to believe that we have discovered all the parts of speech,
any more than to believe that we have discovered all the inhabitable planets in
our galaxy. Certainly, we would expect to find other parts of speech if we dealt
with languages other than English. Japanese, for instance, has words similar to