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# Connectives of English Speech: the Correct Usage of Prepositions, Conjunctions, Relative Pronouns and Adverbs

**Authors:** James C. Fernald · **Year:** 1904 · **Venue:** New York: Funk & Wagnalls **Link:** [archive.org/details/connectivesofeng00fernuoft](https://archive.org/details/connectivesofeng00fernuoft) · **Licence:** [public domain](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/) (author died 1918; published 1904, before 1931 in the US)

usage-guide[licence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Champlin_Fernald)

- [Publisher's page](https://archive.org/details/connectivesofeng00fernuoft)
- [PDF](https://archive.org/download/connectivesofeng00fernuoft/connectivesofeng00fernuoft.pdf)

**Authors (1)**

1. James C. Fernald

Citations and author metrics from OpenAlex (); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

A usage guide for the small words that join thoughts: prepositions, conjunctions, relative pronouns and conjunctive adverbs. The introduction argues that the "thought-connectives" carry the meaning of a sentence and shows the point by taking the Declaration of Independence and removing them. Part I defines each preposition in alphabetical entries (for example BESIDES, BETWEEN, BEHIND), with numbered senses, an illustrative quotation for each sense, and a "Distinctions" note that separates close synonyms such as besides, but, except and save. Parts that follow treat conjunctions and relative and conjunctive adverbs in the same way. The method is descriptive: each entry gives etymology, the sense list and the usage a writer should choose, without a statistical measure.

## Ideas

- I1. Build a government table for prepositions and conjunctions from the entries (verb or adjective, then the preposition it takes), as a lexicon in `en/src/dict.rs`. Each row keeps its source entry id, so a parse can say why a preposition was attached to a verb.
- I2. Use the "Distinctions" notes as a contrast set: for each pair (besides/except, between/among), write sentences where the two forms are not interchangeable, and check that the tagger and the parser keep the sense apart.
- I3. Turn the numbered senses into features for the prepositional-attachment decision, with the sense number as a label, and measure attachment accuracy on UD EWT dev before and after.

## For Mova

The chapters are [23. Complementation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/23-complementation/) (which verb takes which preposition), [24. Coordination and subordination](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/24-coordination-subordination/) and [25. Relative clauses](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/25-relative-clauses/). The code is `en/src/dict.rs` for the table and the parser's attachment in `en/src/parse.rs`. Measure: LAS on UD EWT dev with and without the table, run twice for identical output, plus a negative control in which the prepositions are shuffled within each sentence, which must score worse.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```
@book{fernald1904connectives,
  title = {{Connectives of English Speech: the Correct Usage of Prepositions, Conjunctions, Relative Pronouns and Adverbs}},
  author = {Fernald, James C.},
  year = {1904},
  url = {https://archive.org/details/connectivesofeng00fernuoft}
}
```

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