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My grammar book says that a word like "because" is a subordinating conjunction, meaning that it is a word that can introduce a dependent clause. I know that a dependent clause contains its own subject and predicate. For instance, this would be a principal clause and a dependent clause in which the dependent clause uses "because" and has its own subject and predicate:

"I went to the store [because I wanted those tomatoes.]"

However, I know very well that "because" could be used in other ways. For instance, we could say,

"I made this choice [because of you!]"

How would we label "because" in this case? It's only introducing a prepositional phrase. It's not introducing a subordinate/dependent clause with its own subject/predicate.

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    Because of is a bit of a special case, essentially a two-word preposition – but even without of, there are cases where because is clearly not a subordinating conjunction in recent English, particularly online. Because reasons.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 26 at 18:42
  • There are also other multi-word prepositions in English, e.g. "instead of", "rather than", "next to".
    – Arfrever
    Commented Feb 26 at 19:41
  • "Because" is not actually a subordinator at all, but a preposition. "Because of" is best treated as a compound preposition.
    – BillJ
    Commented Feb 27 at 17:12
  • @JanusBahsJacquet. Or, simply, "Because!"
    – Peter Constable
    Commented Feb 28 at 20:34

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