The border dispute between adverbials and conjunctions in Tswana grammar1

Abstract

This article probes into the multiple grammatical natures of adverbials in Tswana. The discussion isconducted against the background of a number of words that may be alternatively treated either as adverbsor as conjunctives, according to their syntactic position and function in the sentence. We examine thescope 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 wepursue the relationship between this category of adverbials and conjunctives in terms of the connectivefunction they both generate. The classification that we propose for adverbials turns out to be the preferredone to deal with the border dispute between adverbials and conjunctions in Tswana grammar.