Hello,
She kept weeping while watching the movie
She wept while she was watching the movie
In the above two sentences, is “while” used as a conjunction or as a preposition? How to identify a conjunction and a preposition in a sentence?
Members are also requested to give an example in which “while” is used as a conjunction so that I can understand the difference between conjunction and preposition.
Thanks in advance.
In both examples ‘while’ is a conjunction. during the time that. She kept weeping while watching the movie She kept weeping [during the time that] (she was) watching the movie
It’s use as a preposition in UK English is regarded as dialect: “The baby will sleep while supper time.”
Now, human languages are allowed to be fuzzy with grammar and all that, but I think the ‘while’ is more like a preposition in the OP’s sentence (it’s really the same sentence; in the first version ‘she was’ is implied).
The ‘while she was watching the movie’ doesn’t offer a contrasting or additional thought to the description of weeping; it doesn’t really stand as it’s own sentence. It just describes where (in time) the weeping happened, which is what prepositional phrases do.
Consider replacing the clause with ‘during the movie’. That seems clearly a preposition, right? And it has exactly the same function in the sentence, which is basically unchanged as far as what it imparts.
On the other hand, you can’t replace the ‘while’ with ‘and’ (and a commma for sticklers) and have the sense of the sentence stay the same. “She wept, and she was watching the movie.” doesn’t really mean the same thing.
Again, human grammar is allowed to be fuzzy, since we’re smart enough to figure it out, so the right answer here is down to opinion, but I call it a prepostion here.
That makes it a subordinate clause, not a prepositional phrase. (It has a subject and a verb.)
Hmm… Did I say I’m not a professional linguist? No?
Well, anyway, having refreshed and expanded the definition of conjunctions, as defined by Grammar Monster, I now completely repudiate my previous post. “While” is being a subordinate conjunction, creating a subordinate clause which is acting adverbially.
Traditionally, “while” in the OP’s 2nd example is described as a subordinating conjunction (not “subordinate”) and as a preposition in the first example.
However, according to modern grammar sources such as Cambridge Grammar, it is a preposition in both cases. Reason being, “while” acts as the head of a construction while conjunctions do not; and also it’s perfectly acceptable for a preposition to take a declarative complement (something that looks like a complete sentence).
All of the traditional subordinating conjunctions have been reclassified as prepositions, with three exceptions: “whether”, “if” (in the sense of whether), and “that” (in archaic uses where we now normally use “such that” or “so that”).
Yes, and the arguments for such are so facile that I think it should be ignored. They’ve basically just redefined subordinating conjunction to mean something it never did and making prepositions act in a way they never have before. I reject that classical prepositions an ordinarily take a “declarative complement,” and suspect any rare case where they appear to do so just contains an elided subordinating conjunction.
The whole thing seems to be about there being two different kinds of subordinating conjunctions, and rather than deal with that, they just shoved the primary purpose of a subordinating conjunction off to prepositions, now creating two different classes of prepositions instead.
I also reject your claim that this is something about modern grammars. Try to look up subordinating conjunction online, and look at the dates on what is cited. Modern grammar sources still say that subordinating conjunctions are exactly what we think they are, despite the Cambridge grammar being released in 2002. It seems like it’s been rejected.
What we really need to reject is this obsession with naming parts of speech as though that were an end unto itself–as though the taxonomy of the labels for words took precedence over their functions.
The OP’s request sounds to me a lot like a high school English class assignment, wherein the teacher (or the text) is wasting students’ energy on pointless labeling. The only grammatical point of importance here is whether to use a clause or a gerund, and how to go about that.
She kept weeping while watching the movie.
She wept while she was watching the movie.
“while” is not a preposition at all in modern english. It is a subordinating cinjuction, which a clause resulting in the formation of a subordinate clause.
while wtching the movie____is the elliptical version of the clause “while she was watching the movie” because we do not generally repeate the subject when it functions two actions.
Many people campare “while watching” to “before going” which is a prepositional phrase , but “while watching” is not, it is an elliptical adverb clause, which must be written in its full form.
we can write “while in the market”, but we cannot write “before in the market” as a oreposition is not followed by a another prepositional phrase, which is functioning as a predicative expression.
Just as we dont say___ He went there and killed his enemy, we dont also say “ I was watching TV while I was sitting there”.
we must write these sentences__
He went there there and [ he ] killed his enemies.
I was watching TV while [ I was ] sitting there.
Whenever you find [while+Ving], just expand it to a full adverb clause.
Note___After some subordinators as; whether, though, while, if, we can leave the subject and the predicative verb “be”
have a look at this sentences___
If possible, please help me.
If [ it is ] possible.
though poor, he is happy.
though [ he is ] poor.
Do not come until sent for.
Until [ you are ] sent for.
when done, let me know.
when [it is] done.
while driving, be careful.
while[ you are ] driving.
All these sentences are complex sentence with elliptical adverb clauses.
We can have a simple sentence with a subordinator.
I hope it helps🙏
It ain’t limited to language. Most people can’t make a clear distinction between a symbol and what it represents.
I’ve never head this (unsurprisingly) or read this. This is a regionalism? From where?
Hi shailendra welcome aboard!
(note–this is an old thread that just got bumped, but it’s still an interesting conversation).
Help me out: is it true that every preposition must be able to take a simple noun as its object? When I was a kid, the list of prepositions I learned followed that rule. “While” doesn’t: you can’t say, “She wept while the movie.”
I’ve never heard of this reclassification of conjunctions as prepositions. Does anyone have a cite for this?
““The baby will sleep while supper time.””
Common in the North of the country.
One can also while away time.
Aint the English language beautiful…
Here is a preposition:
While thing,
You make my heart sing
umm, OK, maybe not so much.
Prepositions normally precede nouns but, with the exception of the dialectic form “while supper time,” while isn’t used that way. So, by elimination, it has to be called a conjunction even though conjunctions are normally used to join similar parts: clauses to clauses, adjectives to adjectives, etc.
How would you diagram the following sentence?
John, while high on drugs, liked chestnuts when roasted.
While an apparently interesting example, it works out to simple ellipses:
John, while he was high on drugs, liked chestnuts when he was roasted.
Great thing about English is that we can leave out a lot of pieces of a sentence and it can still make sense – or we can add in stuff for clarity (was John roasted, or were the chestnuts?).