1. "Follows" is clearly a verb, which means that "as" cannot here be a preposition, but must be functioning as a subordinate conjunction. That gives us a semi-reduced subordinate clause. The reduction is so common and obvious thta no one would ever say or write the full form: "as *the following* follows." Because of the colon and paragraph break, I have countd this as a mainclause break, but one could, with equal validity, argue that the last sentence is part of a single main clause. (We'll consider possible explanations in Level Five.)