Just curious

[speckleblob]

"Racism and racial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial."

I'm wondering how what's underlined relates to the rest of the sentence. What's its role?

Thank you for your help!
Cheers!

[Daniel]

I'm not aware of a standard answer to that one.

I'd say it's either:

1. An adverbial, so you could paraphrase as "independently..." though that sounds like it has a slightly different sense to me.

or

2. An appositive, meaning a "renaming" of some earlier element, perhaps the predicate "They are often [used....] [and] [independent...]" or maybe extending the kind of discrimination, maybe displaced to the end of the sentence because it's long.

I feel like it's probably an adverbial rather than an appositive, but the structure is a little odd.

[speckleblob]

I have a small question.

What difference is there, if any, between these two sentences:

"So long as you don't disturb any hibernating bears, you'll survive your trip."

"As long as you don't disturb any hibernating bears, you'll survive your trip."

Thanks for your time!

Cheers!

[Daniel]

I don't personally see those as very different although "so long as" is not as common and might have a different context because of that (perhaps formality).