I do not think "then" in your first pair of sentences is a conjunctive adverb such as "therefore,"

"however," and "consequently" are.

In your sentence about being late, "then" functions with the sense of "therefore," and if the

two sentences were combined, the result might well read "You are late; therefore, you go

to the back of the line."

Your example relating to turning the ignition is simply not a sentence.

tj

On Friday 02/11/2011 at 2:02 pm, John Dews-Alexander wrote:

I want to check my own understanding of a few things. This message might meander, but it goes somewhere, promise!

First, is this a very common punctuation standard?

A conjunctive adverb, when used to join two independent clauses, is preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma unless the conjunctive adverb is one syllable, in which case the comma is not necessary.

Following this rule, we would write:

"The first freeze of winter arrived; however, the plants were saved due to the gardener's efforts."

"The first freeze of winter arrived; then the gardener wept over his dead plants."

Is this a punctuation convention that list members use?

Second, I'd like to ask about the word "then". It seems like a prototypical conjunction, functioning to join a concept with a temporal modifier. The example above would qualify as would this one, which uses the conjunction as an adverbial NOT between two independent clauses:

"You are late. You go, then, to the back of the line.

But what about this:

"He turned the ignition then slammed his foot on the gas pedal."

"Then" is not functioning as a conjunctive adverb. It's neither adverbial nor conjunctival (conjunction-like?). In this case is it functioning as a preposition? If so, is the verb phrase "slammed his foot on the gas pedal" serving as object of that preposition?

Am I on the right track here? I'm trying to answer a student question about why our native instinct is to say:

Speaker A: "Who should go first?"
Speaker B: "You then me." (Instead of "You [go] then I [go].)

Is it "me" because it is serving as object of a preposition ("then")?

Thanks for weighing in on this!
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/