Just an observation about the concept of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.

I think these categories are based on syntactic properties and not semantic properties.  
Traditional grammar seems to get it right.  Craig noted:

  You can make a case that "He wanted to please her, for she was the girl
of his dreams" is very close to "He wanted to please her because she
was the girl of his dreams." I would like to call both subordinate, but
traditional grammar (and the punctuation conventions that come with it)
recognize the "for" as coordinating. "For she was the girl of his
dreams" would not be a fragment in traditional grammar, but "because
she was the girl of his dreams" would.

A subordinate clause is within a main clause.  This allows an interesting property.  In the following two sentences, she can refer to Mary.  

1) He wanted to please Mary because she was the girl of her dreams.
2) Because she was the girl of her dreams, he wanted to please Mary.

On the other hand, this is not possible with "for" in the equivalent sentence for (2).

3) *For she was the girl of her dreams, he wanted to please Mary.

This is not to say the language changes.  I think "though" is becoming an adverbial conjunction for many.

Bob Yates
University of Central Missouri

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