We explain what grammatical links are, what their function is, what types exist and examples of each one.
What are grammatical links?
In grammar, is known as links to certain types of words or morphemes that fulfill the role of connectors between sentences or between phrases. In other words, within the syntax, act as a bridge between a part of the speech and the other, while exercising a specific meaning in what has been said.
Put more simply, they are grammatical particles that allow to coordinate or subordinate a prayer with respect to another, or a sentence fragment with respect to another.
Links are an indispensable part of linguistic discourse and play a vital role in providing cohesion to the text, that is, keeping it together and keeping its parts related to each other. However, they are not invisible or innocuous terms, but they also have a meaning, a meaning.
The effect that the links have on the sentences, according to their meaning, can be:
- Coordinator When the nexus works as a union between words of the same category or between sentences.
- Subordinate. The nexus can belong to a wide variety of words and give one sentence a lower rank or dependence on the other.
In the latter case, semantic relationships are established of prior (they indicate that something happens before something else), of simultaneity (they indicate that something happens at the same time as something else) or posterior (they indicate that something happens after something else).
Types of links
Next, we will classify and give an example of the links in Spanish, taking into account the distinction that we made before, between coordinating links and subordinating links:
- Coordinating links. Those that exert coordinating effects, and that can be, in turn:
- Copulatives.Those that serve to join or add elements, such as: Y, and, neither, that. For example: "I bought potatoes Y pumpkins "," I didn't get fish neither meat".
- Tradeoffs. Those who, on the contrary, make a separation or a choice between the terms, such as or, or, already, or good. For example: "Do you want to go out or stay at home? "," I don't know whether to accept your proposal, O well reject it ”.
- Adversative. Those that express a clear opposition between terms, or something that occurs despite something else, such as: more, but nevertheless, but, even if, otherwise, Nevertheless. For example: “I want to eat pasta, but I am very fat ”,“ We live in difficult times, even if we still have hope ”.
- Ilatives. Those that allow us to maintain the thread of the discourse or indicate the relationship of what has been said with respect to future ideas. For example: with what, well, later, therefore, too, so that, therefore. For example: “My parents forbade me to leave the house, Thus, I couldn't go to the party "," That man seems suspicious to me, well he's not wearing his gloves. "
- Subordinate links. Those that exert subordinating effects, and that can be of a different grammatical type, but are classified according to the type of subordination they produce, as follows:
- Subordination substantive. It occurs when a sentence is introduced into another main one, to act as a noun or a noun phrase. For this, the most used links are: which, the fact that, that, who, and are usually classified according to the syntactic role played by said noun: subject of the sentence, direct object, etc. For example: “The doctor told me that I must do more exercise ”(direct object),“The fact that you smoke so much it will make you live less ”(subject).
- Adjective subordination. It occurs when the sentence or the element introduced fulfills in the sentence chain the role of a adjective, that is, complementing a name or characterizing the subject, to say a case. It usually uses links such as: which, which, that, who, whose. For example: “My cousin arrived, the fact that has sinusitis "," He bought a TV, whose colors they are HD ”.
- Adverbial subordination. As its name implies, it occurs when the subordinate sentence or particle fulfills the role of a adverb within the topic sentence, which can happen in two different ways:
- Circumstantial subordination. When the subordinate operates as a circumstantial complement, that is, of context: temporary (when, While, after, etc.), local (where, where, From where, etc.), modal (What, according, like, so that, etc.) or comparative (As, more than, less than, etc.). For example: “I woke up when my mother cried "," found a hole where spend the night "," went out into the street, like nothing was going to happen to him ”,“ The night was so cold What the worst of the winter ”.
- Logical subordination. When the subordinate operates as a logical connector, that is, it indicates a relationship between the terms that it involves: causal (because, as, etc.), consecutive (so, therefore, so that, etc.), concessive (even if, by more than, etc.), final (for what, to look at, in order to) or conditional (Yes, if, etc.). For example: “They stayed at home because it was raining ”,“ you have a cough and fever, so you must be infected "," we will go to the doctor by more than protest ”,“ you will go to jail for what pay your crimes "," I'll put these handcuffs on you if decide to flee ”.