Popular grammar books have long admonished their readers for using conjunctive adverbs as coordinators, and nowhere more than in the case of however. The very force of this prescription suggests that the rule is far from intuitive for many users of standard edited English: examples of however taking on a syntactically coordinating function (equivalent to but) are not difficult to find, nor are they limited to unedited sources. This paper addresses the question of whether prescriptivism is clouding our view of a linguistic change in the grammatical status of however. Drawing on data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), we argue that the apparent “confusion” about whether however can serve as a clausal coordinator may be closely related to its increasing preference, over the past century-and-a-half, for clause-initial placement. Descriptive grammars of the last twenty years have labeled select conjunctive adverbs other than however “marginal coordinators.” This paper presents the hypothesis that however is following a historical trajectory similar to the “marginal coordinators” so and yet, whose mixed function is now accepted as standard; and it explores the extent to which shifting patterns in sentence placement preferences—as a result, perhaps, of colloquialization—may be a factor in the changing grammatical function of however.

中文翻译：

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然而的语法状态

流行的语法书籍长期以来一直告诫他们的读者使用连接副词作为协调词，而在然而的情况下。这种规定的力量表明，对于许多标准编辑英语的用户来说，该规则远非直观：然而，具有句法协调功能（相当于但是）的例子并不难找到，也不限于未经编辑的来源。本文解决了这样的问题，即规定主义是否掩盖了我们对然而的语法状态的语言变化的看法。借鉴来自当代美国英语语料库 (COCA) 和历史美国英语语料库 (COHA) 的数据，我们认为，关于是否可以充当从句协调器的明显“混淆”可能与其日益增加的偏好密切相关，在过去的一个半世纪中，用于子句初始位置。过去 20 年的描述性语法已经标记了精选的连接副词，而不是“边缘协调者”。然而，本文提出的假设是遵循类似于“边缘协调器”的历史轨迹，其混合功能现在被接受为标准；它探讨了句子放置偏好的变化模式——也许是口语化的结果——可能是改变语法功能的一个因素。” 本文提出的假设是，然而，它正在遵循类似于“边缘协调器”的历史轨迹，其混合功能现在被接受为标准；它探讨了句子放置偏好的变化模式——也许是口语化的结果——可能是改变语法功能的一个因素。” 本文提出的假设是，然而，它正在遵循类似于“边缘协调器”的历史轨迹，其混合功能现在被接受为标准；它探讨了句子放置偏好的变化模式——也许是口语化的结果——可能是改变语法功能的一个因素。