Korean Job Discussion Forums

krats1976 · Joined: 14 May 2003

OK, here's the sentence:

Begin grooming your kitten while it is still young.

So, while is the adverb that modifies the verb begin right?

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

It doesn't really modify the verb. It's more like "but" or "and." The term you might be searching for is "conjunction."

Privateer · Joined: 31 Aug 2005 Location: Easy Street.

You can replace 'while' with 'when' and replace 'while/when it is still young' with any other time clause like 'at 6 o'clock' or an adverb of time like 'soon'. So I suppose the time clause is adverbial, but the word 'when' (or 'while') is not itself an adverb.

You can classify 'when' as a relative pronoun here because 'when' can be seen as a contraction of 'at a time when' (cf 'to a person who', 'in a situation that'). That doesn't work for 'while' though...

To cut a long story short, looks like RACETRAITOR is right and it's a conjunction.

Oh and this should be in the Job Discussion Forum.

Qinella · Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Location: the crib

Begin grooming your kitten and it is still young are both independent clauses that could stand alone as individual sentences, but are joined to create one sentence. The joining word is, thus, a conjunction. I could be wrong, but I think any word performing that role is a conjunction.

Billy Pilgrim · Joined: 08 Sep 2004

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

Qinella · Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Location: the crib

Now I'm not sure. Billy Pilgrim may be right. The reason for my wavering is that you could rearrange the sentence like this: While it is still young, begin grooming your kitten. In this case, while would be part of the adverbial clause. Tough question.

Q.

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

If you want to see the sentence in clauses, then "while it is still young" could be an adverb clause, if there really is such a thing. However, "while" is still a conjunction.

We could post it on this site for judgement:

http://www.painintheenglish.com

red headed stranger · Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Location: Seoul

"While it is still young" is an adverbial clause because it modifies the action of the whole complex sentence.

In this case, the word while behaves as a subordinating conjunction in that adverbial clause.

Smee · Joined: 24 Dec 2004 Location: Jeollanam-do

My vote is for conjunction.
We had to memorize a whole list of 'em in German class.
Genitive, right?

krats1976 · Joined: 14 May 2003

OK, you guys didn't help, so I looked elsewhere Laughing

EFLtrainer · Joined: 04 May 2005

It's all about function, which is one reason why gramamr should be taught only as an adjunct to language teaching, not a primary component.

In the example above, while is used to let us know WHEN it is best to strt grooming a kitten. It's primary function is not to join the two ideas of of "Begin grooming your kitten" and "It is still young."

Begin grooming your kitten. It is still young.

Ex.: Vet to child. The vet is training the child how to groom, then makes the unrelated observation that it is still young.

Looked at this way, the two ideas can be seen as utterly unrelated. The addition of while and making one sentence cannot be interpreted in any way except to mean it is best to start grooming your kitten while young.

Thus, the FUNCTION of while in this sentence is as an adverb of time to tell us when to begin conditioning your pet to accept grooming. Anything else is purely academic, though not uninteresting.

red headed stranger · Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Location: Seoul

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

Let's look back at the original question.