The border dispute between adverbials and conjunctions in Tswana grammar

Abstract

This article probes into the multiple grammatical natures of adverbials in Tswana. The discussion is conducted against the background of a number of words that may be alternatively treated either as adverbs or as conjunctives, according to their syntactic position and function in the sentence. We examine the scope of modification that adverbials have in relation to their structural, syntactic and semantic features, and we identify four categories of adverbials in accordance with the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), by Quirk et al. (1985). One of the categories is termed conjuncts and we pursue the relationship between this category of adverbials and conjunctives in terms of the connective function they both generate. The classification that we propose for adverbials turns out to be the preferred one to deal with the border dispute between adverbials and conjunctions in Tswana grammar.