Conjunction (grammar) in the context of "Grammatical particle"

Polysyndeton (from Ancient Greek πολύ poly 'many' and συνδετόν syndeton 'bound together with') is the deliberate insertion of conjunctions into a sentence in order to slow the rhythm of the prose so as to produce an impressively solemn note.

In grammar, a polysyndetic coordination is a coordination in which all conjuncts are linked by coordinating conjunctions (usually and, but, or, nor in English).

In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar syntactic behavior (they play similar roles within the grammatical structure of sentences), sometimes similar morphological behavior in that they undergo inflection for similar properties and even similar semantic behavior. Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection, numeral, article, and determiner.

Other terms than part of speech—particularly in modern linguistic classifications, which often make more precise distinctions than the traditional scheme does—include word class, lexical class, and lexical category. Some authors restrict the term lexical category to refer only to a particular type of syntactic category; for them the term excludes those parts of speech that are considered to be function words, such as pronouns. The term form class is also used, although this has various conflicting definitions. Word classes may be classified as open or closed: open classes (typically including nouns, verbs and adjectives) acquire new members constantly, while closed classes (such as pronouns and conjunctions) acquire new members infrequently, if at all.

Content words, in linguistics, are words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur. In a traditional approach, nouns were said to name objects and other entities, lexical verbs to indicate actions, adjectives to refer to attributes of entities, and adverbs to attributes of actions. They contrast with function words, which have very little substantive meaning and primarily denote grammatical relationships between content words, such as prepositions (in, out, under etc.), pronouns (I, you, he, who etc.) and conjunctions (and, but, till, as etc.).

All words can be classified as either content or function words, but it is not always easy to make the distinction. With only around 150 function words, 99.9% of words in the English language are content words. Although small in number, function words are used at a disproportionately higher rate than content and make up about 50% of any English text because of the conventional patterns of usage that binds function words to content words almost every time they are used, which creates an interdependence between the two word groups.

In traditional grammar, an independent clause (or main clause) is a clause that can stand by itself as a simple sentence. An independent clause contains a subject and a predicate and makes sense by itself.

Independent clauses can be joined by using a semicolon or by using a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet, etc.).

A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. An example is the word which in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the relative pronoun which introduces the relative clause. The relative clause modifies the noun house. The relative pronoun, "which," plays the role of an object within that clause, "which Jack built."

In the English language, the following are the most common relative pronouns: which, who, whose, whom, whoever, whomever, and that, though some linguists analyze that in relative clauses as a conjunction / complementizer.

In linguistics, the term conjunct has three distinct uses:

• A conjunct is an adverbial that adds information to the sentence that is not considered part of the propositional content (or at least not essential) but which connects the sentence with previous parts of the discourse. Rare as it may be, conjuncts may also connect to the following parts of the discourse.
  • It was raining. Therefore, we didn’t go swimming.
  • It was sunny. However, we stayed inside.
  • You are such a dork. Still, I love you from the bottom of my heart.
• A conjunct is one of the terms that are conjoined in a conjoining construction. Conjuncts are conjoined by means of a conjunction, which can be coordinating, subordinating or correlative. Conjuncts can be words, phrases, clauses, or full sentences.
  • [Gretchen and her daughter] bought [motor oil, spark plugs, and dynamite].
  • Take two of these and call me in the morning.
• A verb form, for example the conjunct verb endings of Old Irish or the conjunct mood (sometimes called the subjunctive mood) of Algonquian languages.

This article discusses the first kind of conjunct.