thy
_father_ and thy _mother_."--_Ib._, xviii, 19. Here the latter noun or
pronoun is connected by _and_ to the former, and governed by the same
preposition or verb. Conjunctions themselves have no government, unless the
questionable phrase "_than whom_" may be reckoned an exception. See Obs.
17th below, and others that follow it.

OBS. 2.--Those conjunctions which connect _sentences_ or _clauses_,
commonly unite one sentence or clause to an other, either as an additional
assertion, or as a condition, a cause, or an end, of what is asserted. The
conjunction is placed _between_ the terms which it connects, except there
is a transposition, and then it stands before the dependent term, and
consequently at the beginning of the whole sentence: as, "He taketh away
the first, _that_ he may establish the second."--_Heb._, x, 9. "_That_ he
may establish the second, he taketh away the first."

OBS. 3.--The term that follows a conjunction, is in some instances a
_phrase_ of several words, yet not therefore a whole clause or member,
unless we suppose it elliptical, and supply what will make it such: as,
"And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, AS _to the Lord_, AND _not unto
men_"--_Col._, iii, 23. If we say, this means, "as _doing it_ to the Lord,
and not _as doing it_ unto men," the terms are still mere phrases; but if
we say, the sense is, "as _if ye did it_ to the Lord, and not _as if ye did
it_ unto men," they are clauses, or sentences. Churchill says, "The office
of the conjunction is, to connect one _word_ with an other, or one _phrase_
with an other."--_New Gram._, p. 152. But he uses the term _phrase_ in a
more extended sense than I suppose it will strictly bear: he means by it, a
_clause_, or _member_; that is, a sentence which forms a part of a greater
sentence.

OBS. 4.--What is the office of this part of speech, according to Lennie,
Bullions, Brace, Hart, Hiley, Smith, M'Culloch, Webster, Wells, and others,
who say that it "joins _words_ and _sentences_ together," (see Errors on p.
434 of this work,) it is scarcely possible to conceive. If they imagine it
to connect "_words_" on the one side, to "_sentences_" on the other; this
is plainly absurd, and contrary to facts. If they suppose it to join
sentence to sentence, by merely connecting word to word, in a joint
relation; this also is absurd, and self-contradictory. Again, if they mean,
that the conjunction sometimes connects word with word, and sometimes,
sentence wi