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Use of conjunctions

English Language & Usage Asked by Mathias1480 on April 12, 2021

Can conjunctions be added after certain adverbs, as in the following sentence :

  • We see them sporting in the sea, where no one should be found yet each one must be keen as they play hide-and-seek.

or does the adverb "where" makes the conjunction "yet" seem to appear in discontinuity ?

2 Answers

Following the principles described by John Ross in his famous dissertation Infinite Syntax, an adverb can be moved to the beginning of coordinated clauses only if it was in both clauses before being moved. In your example,

... in the sea, where no one should be found yet each one must be keen as they play hide-and-seek.

"where" represents the "there" which occurs in each of the two coordinated clauses:

no one should be found there

each one must be keen as they play hide-and-seek there

Answered by Greg Lee on April 12, 2021

In the sea, [where no one should be found yet each one must be keen as they play hide-and-seek].

The bracketed element is a supplementary (non-defining) relative clause in which the preposition "where" has the PP "in the sea" as antecedent.

Supplementary relatives are not modifiers but separate units of information, non-constituents, that have a semantic 'anchor'. Here the anchor is the PP "in the sea".

Note that "yet" is not a conjunction, but a connective adverb with a concessive meaning.

Answered by BillJ on April 12, 2021

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