Page 309 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

COHESION ANDCOHERENCE 295
since
till/until
Preposition Conjunction
Preposition
Conjunction
Since the 1960s, the urban growth has declined, [no verb]
Since suburbs began to attract urban residents, a large number ofjobsalsoshifted tosmallercities,[verbphrase—began to attract]
Until the expansion of suburbanjob markets, most urban dwell- ers lived in central cities, [no verb]
Until manufacturing job markets emerged in the early 1800s, only 5% of Americans lived, in cities, [verb—emerged]
(Adapted from Miller, 2000)
In addition to simple (one-word) prepositions and conjunctions with identical forms, many complex prepositions and subordinating conjunc- tions also have similar meanings and text functions. In academic writing, some can be used interchangeably provided that verbs are not included in constructions following complex prepositions.
Complex Prepositions
Complex prepositions can be divided into two groups: two-word and three-word units. They are relatively easy to identify.
Two-word prepositions consist of a word + a simple preposition.
Three-word sequences include a simple preposition + a Noun + a simple preposition.
The uses of complex prepositions, in addition to sentence transitions and subordinate conjunctions in complex sentences, can provide writers with a large number of options among lexical connectors. However, as with sen- tence transitions, the mere usage of connectives of any type does not serve to make disjointed text cohesive (see Suggestions for Teaching).
Many two- and three-word prepositions have similar connective func- tions and can be used in proximate syntactic constructions. In addition, the meanings of complex prepositions are also similar to those of sentence con- nectives such as transitions and subordinators (see chap. 10). V arious con- structions with the connective functions can be used interchangeably provided that the syntactic constructions they conjoin are modified accord- ingly (e.g., only nouns and noun phrases can be used following preposi- tions, and whole clauses after sentence transitions and subordinators in complex sentences). For example:
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