junctions, and prepositions. These have a
certain resemblance to one another, so far as they are all of them
_connectives_; yet there are also characteristical differences by which
they may in general be easily distinguished. Relative pronouns represent
antecedents, and stand in those relations which we call cases; conjunctive
adverbs assume the connective power in addition to their adverbial
character, and consequently sustain a double relation; conjunctions,
(except the introductory correspondents,) join words or sentences together,
showing their relation either to each other or to something else;
prepositions, though naturally subject themselves to something going
before, assume the government of the terms which follow them, and in this
they differ from all the rest.

OBS. 2.--Conjunctions do not express any of the real objects of the
understanding, whether things, qualities, or actions, but rather the
several modes of connexion or contrast under which these objects are
contemplated. Hence conjunctions were said by Aristotle and his followers
to be in themselves "devoid of signification;" a notion which Harris, with
no great propriety, has adopted in his faulty definition[313] of this part
of speech. It is the office of this class of particles, to link together
words, phrases, or sentences, that would otherwise appear as loose shreds,
or unconnected aphorisms; and thus, by various forms of dependence, to give
to discourse such continuity as may fit it to convey a connected train of
thought or reasoning. The skill or inability of a writer may as strikingly
appear in his management of these little connectives, as in that of the
longest and most significant words in the language.

"The current is often evinced by the straws,
And the course of the wind by the flight of a feather;
So a speaker is known by his _ands_ and his _ors_,
Those stitches that fasten his patchwork together."--_Robert F. Mott_.

OBS. 3.--Conjunctions sometimes connect entire sentences, and sometimes
particular words or phrases only. When one whole sentence is closely linked
with an other, both become clauses or members of a more complex sentence;
and when one word or phrase is coupled with an other, both have in general
a common dependence upon some other word in the same sentence. In
etymological parsing, it may be sufficient to name the conjunction as such,
and repeat the definition above; but, in syntactical parsing, the learner