Determinant meaning within the English language exists by virtue of the glue that is conjunctions. Sticky little words like “but” and “also” join together, compartmentalize, and disjoint our speech, thoughts, social structure, and reality, in the mathematics of meaning.
Even the American legal system depends upon conjunctions like “either/or” and the contrasts they create. Both defense and prosecution rely on consequence conjunctions, such as “while” and “however”; there are no separate law schools for prosecution and defense. Lawyers switch sides in any argument, which renders the syntax of the courtroom meaningless.
A subordinating conjunction, “in order to,” is one the first phrases of the United States Constitution:
“We the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The rest of the US Constitution is a series of “and” and “also” statements made along with a few exclusionary buts. Consequence and contrast statements, created by conjunctions like “however” and “subsequently,” are what direct and enforce our laws.
I have come to call my own world of “also” and “in addition” an Also Reality. Also Reality is an attempt at making sense of my dissociative fugue and amnesia. This is to say that I’ve experienced more horror than my brain is capable of absorbing. There are times when I think flashbacks are speaking to me. I have delusional thoughts and irrational beliefs that have congealed and amalgamated into a chaotic benevolence. Besides that, I am of the-CIA-is-spying-on-my-thoughts proclivity.
An elder in my family was a homophobic Military Intelligence Service agent and a Mormon ecclesiastical leader. He also tried to make out with me when I was twenty-three years old.
In addition, the Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico was named after someone on my father’s side. He taught Lindbergh to fly and was thanked by Churchill for ending World War II. Another family member of mine was directly involved in de-escalating 9/11. He also once broke my nose in his kitchen. My family could stop international wars, but they could not keep themselves from beating their children. In 2012, I was also in a domestically violent relationship with a trained NSA sniper, former Marine, and poet; he also could be the reason why I was diagnosed with cervical precancer by way of HPV.
Almost everything that broke me was a direct consequence of actions made by the men of the American military. This is not, however, a cause/effect relationship as it is usually understood. Psychopathy is not a consequence of service; it is part of an Also Reality. The military could have attracted abusers but it also could have cultivated them. I am also not abused because I am disabled; I am a victim of abuse who is also disabled. I am also not fabricating the events of my abuse because of my disability, although my disability can result in delusion, as I mentioned before. Somehow, all of these coexist.
Families often have a favorite consequence clause: “You are bad and we are good, because you are crazy.” They inverted reality, and they denied that both their value and mine could exist independent of one another. To family, anger is the reason someone is abused, not a product of the abuse. And they wholeheartedly believe that they are the victims of their own behaviors.
Sciences, both physical and psychological, argue that we exist by bouncing off one another, that relationships define us at the atomic and cellular levels. I usually tell my students that language is the physics of people. Language, however, left me after I was sexually assaulted by that poet-Marine. I went speechless. I could not even read a book without having a flashback to the assault. But, I spoke through art, when I took up painting which brought me back to speech. I painted my first works in a dissociative state and then looked back, making sense of what I had rendered after the act; a gift from the Also Reality.
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To conclude, here is a brief typology of some of the most relevant conjunctions in English language:
– Correlative Conjunctions List
- Both and
- Such that
- Not only
- But also
- Whether
- Or
- Neither/nor
- Scarcely
- Rather/than
- Not/but
- As many/as
- As/as
- No sooner/than
- Either/or
-Conjunctive Adverbs
- Subsequently
- Next
- Finally
- Consequently
- Accordingly
- Indeed
- Still
- Likewise
- Also
- Meanwhile
- Otherwise
- Before
- Moreover
- Then
- In addition
- Conversely
- However
- Besides
- Furthermore
- Nevertheless
- After
- Hence
- Thus
- Therefore
- Nonetheless
- Similarly
- Instead
-Subordinating Conjunctions
- Whereas
- In case
- So
- So that
- Unless
- Until
- Because
- Whenever
- Even though, even if
- Although
- How
- Wherever
- Since
- Whether
- Only if
- After
- Now that
- If
- As
- While
- Once
- Which
- In order that
- When
- Before
- Though