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English subordinators (also known as subordinating conjunctions or complementizers) are words that mostly mark
clauses In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
as subordinate. The subordinators form a closed
lexical category 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 ass ...
in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
and include ''whether''; and, in some of their uses, ''if'', ''that'', ''for'', arguably ''to'', and marginally ''how''. Syntactically, they appear immediately before the subordinate element. Semantically, they tend to be empty.


Terminology and membership

Peter Matthews defines ''subordinator'' as "a word, etc. which marks a clause as subordinate." Most dictionaries and many
traditional grammar Traditional grammar (also known as classical grammar) is a framework for the description of the structure of a language. The roots of traditional grammar are in the work of classical Greek and Latin philologists. The formal study of grammar based ...
books use the term ''subordinating conjunction'' and include a much larger set of words, most of them prepositions such as ''before'', ''when'', and ''though'' that take clausal complements. The
generative grammar Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistic ...
tradition uses the term ''complementizer'', a term which sometimes excludes the prepositions.


Membership

The subordinators are ''whether''; and, in some of their uses, '' if'', ''that'', ''for'', arguably ''to'', and marginally ''how''.


''Whether''

''Whether'' is always a subordinator. It marks closed interrogative content clauses such as ''I wonder whether this would work''. It is often possible to substitute ''if'' for ''whether'', the main exceptions being when the subordinate clause functions as the subject, as in ''Whether it's true is an empirical question'' and cases with ''or not'', such as ''I'll be there whether you are there or not.''


''If''

''If'' is a subordinator when it marks closed interrogative content clauses such as ''I wonder if this would work''. It is always possible to substitute ''whether'' for subordinator ''if''. Where such substitution is not possible, ''if'' is instead a preposition, usually with a meaning that is usually conditional but sometimes concessive (''They were jubilant, if exhausted'', etc).


''That''

''That'' is a subordinator when it marks declarative content clauses such as ''I think that this would work'' and in relative clauses such as ''the fact that he was there''. In contexts where it could be contrasted with ''this'', it is a
determiner A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
.


''For''

''For'' is a subordinator only when it marks infinitival clauses having a subject such as ''for this to happen'' (in which ''this'' is the subject). In sentences like "I shall not be imprisoned unjustly, for I have rights", it is instead a preposition.


''To''

''To'' is arguably a subordinator when it marks infinitival verb phrases such as ''To be sure, we'd have to double check'' (but a preposition in ''I went to Peoria''). If it is a subordinator then it is the only one that marks a verb phrase, not a clause, as subordinate.


''How''

''How'' is a marginal subordinator only when it marks finite clauses such as ''She told him how it wasn't fun any more''. Note that ''that'' could substitute for ''how'' in this example. Elsewhere ''how'' is an adverb or occasionally (as in ''How are you?'') an adjective. Various linguists, including
Geoffrey K. Pullum Geoffrey Keith Pullum (; born 8 March 1945) is a British and American linguist specialising in the study of English. He is Professor Emeritus of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. Pullum is a co-author of ''The Cambridge Gram ...
,
Paul Postal Paul Martin Postal (born November 10, 1936 in Weehawken, New Jersey) is an American linguist. Biography Postal received his PhD from Yale University in 1963 and taught at MIT until 1965. That year, he moved to the City University of New York. In ...
and Richard Hudson, and Robert Fiengo have suggested that ''to'' in cases like ''I want to go'' is an acutely
defective Defective may refer to:: *Defective matrix, in algebra *Defective verb, in linguistics *Defective, or ''haser'', in Hebrew orthography, a spelling variant that does not include mater lectionis *Something presenting an anomaly, such as a product de ...
auxiliary verb: one with no tensed forms.
Rodney Huddleston Rodney D. Huddleston (born 4 April 1937) is a British linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English. Huddleston is the primary author of ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (), which presents a comp ...
argues against this position in ''
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was publ ...
'', but Robert Levine counters these arguments. Bettelou Los calls Pullum's arguments that ''to'' is an auxiliary verb "compelling".


Subordinators vs other categories


Subordinators vs prepositions

Traditional grammar includes in its class of "subordinating conjunctions" prepositions like ''because'', ''while'', and ''unless'', which take a clausal complement. But since at least Otto Jespersen (see
English prepositions English prepositions are words – such as ''of'', ''in'', ''on'', ''at'', ''from'', etc. – that function as the head of a prepositional phrase, and most characteristically license a noun phrase object (e.g., ''in the water''). Semantically, t ...
for the historical development of the idea) most modern grammarians distinguish these two categories based on whether they add meaning to the sentence or are purely functional. The distinction can be shown with ''if'', since there is a subordinator ''if'' and a preposition ''if''. The preposition is needed to express a meaning, usually conditional (e.g., ''If it works, that's great''). Subordinators, though, have no meaning. They just mark a clause as subordinate; there is no difference in meaning between ''I know that you were there'' and ''I know you were there''. Similarly, in ''She asked if we were there'' the subordinator ''if'' merely marks the following clause as a closed interrogative content clause, without contributing anything to a conditional, concessive, or other meaning.


Notes

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References

Subordinators Subordinators by language English words