AS WELL AS

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi Mentors,

I just want to ask you about the exact term for these following expressions:

coupled with, as well as, along with, together with, not to mention

Thank you so much in advance :wink:

Julius

2

My advice is to look them all up in the Macmillan dictionary (for ‘coupled with’ search on ‘coupled’; for the rest, just copy them and find the definition).

3

***** NOT A TEACHER *****

Hello, Julius:

Take this sentence, for example:

“The captain, as well as the players, was tired.”

How does one classify “as well as the players”?

I checked several of my books, and they had different answers:

  1. parenthetical phrase.
  2. prepositional phrase.

Of course, I do not know which one is correct. Perhaps, we can call both of them correct.

It seems, however, that most of my books lean toward calling it a prepositional phrase.

As far as the words “as well as” are concerned, it seems safest to simply refer to them as an “expression.” (One book labels them as “parenthetical expressions.”)

One scholarly book refers to expressions such as “as well as” as a “quasi-coordinator.” I believe that means something like: it is something like a conjunction, but it is not really a conjunction. It is closer to a preposition.

If you find a really good definition from a reliable source, please let us know.

James

P.S. The really important point, however, is the verb that follows such a phrase. As in my example, formal English requires the singular. But many native speakers feel more comfortable with the plural because they apparently feel such expressions like “as well as” to be a conjunction. So:

The captain, as well as the players, WERE tired. (That is: The captain AND the players were tired.)

If I were you, however, I would try to follow the singular verb rule.

4

James, I would explain it as a ‘parenthetical comparison’. If I were to parse that sentence, I would do thus: The captain, as well as the players, WAS tired > The captain was tired as well as the players <> As well as the players, the captain was tired.
(The phrase ‘as well as’ is taken as ‘and’ by most non-native users)

PS: We were also taught to be careful in according prominence in such situations. For instance, we may not say: The sun shines as well as the moon. It should be: The moon shines as well as the sun. (Doesn’t this mean ‘The moon as well as the sun shines’?)

5

Thank you, Anglophile, for your always helpful comments.

6

Thank you so much for giving some explanations :wink: