Composite Sentence

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But at night in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time was always flying and money flowing in, and his own fu­ture as much ,,in irons" as ever. (Galsworthy)

So she slept and dreamed, and smiled in her sleep, and once threw out her arm to feel something which was not there, dreaming still. (Mansfield)

Further examples of one-member complex sentences are those in

which a sub-clause expresses the object or the subject felt as missing in

the principal clause, e. g. :

Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever. (Galsworthy) Did not Winifred think that it was much better for the young

people to be secure and not run any risk at their age? (Gals worthy)

What's done cannot be undone (Proverb)

Cf. Ukrainian;

Here belong also sub-clauses which extend some part of the princi­pal clause: subject, predicative, attribute, object or adverbials with demonstrative pronouns, present or readily understood, e. g.: All is well that ends well. He is the one you wanted to see.

COORDINATION

The process of coordination, simply stated, involves the linking of structures of equal grammatical rank — single words and phrases in elementary compound groups or independent clauses in compound sen­tences. The coordinative conjunctions and the correlatives serve to pro­duce this coordination by joining the grammatically equivalent elements in question. Two or more clauses equal in rank can together be given the status of a single sentence. Such co-ordinated units make up a com­pound sentence:

Gerald was disappointed, for he had wanted a son, but he nevertheless was pleased chough are his small black-haired daughter… (M. Mitchel).

Coordination within a multi-clause sentence is a means of joining a series of parallel subordinate clauses in joint dependence upon a subor­dination centre in the leading clause, or a means of connecting two or more independent main clauses, which jointly subordinate, a common member, mostly expressed by a dependent clause. In other words, coor­dination in this monograph is recognized»as a syntactic means of con­necting the constituent parts of multi-clause sentences only when it is made use of in the same way as in single-clause sentences, which contain a member in common subordinating or subordinated by coordinated syntactic elements. In all other cases independent coordinated subject predicate units are viewed as syntactically independent though contextually related sentences, regardless of the marks of punctuation which divide them .

The patterns of multi-clause sentences containing more than two clauses (from three to twelve or thirteen) are based upon two fundamental principles of connection. The first is the principle of consecutive (step-wise) subordination, according to which in each clause (except the last one) there is a single subordination centre, nominal or verbal. It subor­dinates only one dependent clause.

The second principle is that of parallel (or homogeneous) and non-parallel con-subordination (i. e. dependence of two or more parallel or non-parallel clauses upon one, two or more subordination centres within the main clause). In the second sentence-pattern (represented by several variant patterns) there are only two syntactic levels as all dependent clauses are of the same level of subordination.

When both these principles are combined within one and the same sen­tence, the most complicated structures of multi-clause sentences arise.

It will be helpful to identify linking words in co-ordination as follows:

a) Copulative, connecting two members and their meanings, the second member indicating an addition of equal importance, or, on the other hand, an advance in time and space, or an intensification, often coming in pairs, then called correlatives: and; both . and; equally . and; alike . and; at once . and; not . nor for neither, or and neither); not for never) . not for nor) . either; neither . nor, etc.

Copulative.

It was a nice little place and Mr. and Mrs. Witla were rather proud of it.

Mr. Home did not lift his eyes from his breakfast-plate for about two minutes nor did he speak. (Ch. Bronte)

b) Disjunctive, connecting two members but disconnecting their meaning, the meaning in the second member excluding that in the first: or, in older English also either or outher(-or) and in questions whether . or with the force of simple or; or . either; either . or, etc., the disjunctive adverbs else, otherwise, or . or, or . else, in older English other else.

Disjunctive

He knew it to be nonsense or it mould have frightened him (Galsworthy).

c) Adversative, connecting two members, but contrasting their meaning: but, but then, only, still, yet, and yet, however, on the other hand, again, on the contrary, etc.

Adversative

The room was dark, but the street was lighter because of its lamps. (Dickens)

d) Causative-consequtive

There was something amiss with Mr. Zightnood, for he was strangely grave and looked ill. (Dickens)

After all, the two of them belonged to the same trade, so talk was easy and happy between them. (Priestley)

Coordinative conjunctions are rather few in number: and, but, or, yet, for.

Sentence-linking words, called conjunctive advebs are: consequently, furthermore, hence, however, moreover, nevertheless, therefore.

Some typical fixed prepositional phrases functioning as sentence linkers are: at least, as a result, after a while, in addition, in contrast, in the next place, on the other hand, for example, for instance.

It comes quite natural that the semantic relations between the co­ordinate clauses depend to a considerable degree on the lexical meaning of the linking words.

SUBORDINATION

The classification of subordinate clauses offers special difficulties and remains the area of syntax where we find different linguistic approach­es with some important disputable points open to thought and discus­sion. Much still remains to be done in this field of grammar learning. This is one of many ranges of linguistic structure in which we find borderline cases where the lexico-grammatical organization of com­plex syntactic units presents special difficulties.

Contexts are of extreme importance in understanding syntax.

Various kinds of contextual indication, linguistic or situational, and intonation in actual speech resolve structural ambiguity in homonymic patterns on the syntactic level.

As we shall further see, the significant order of sentence elements, as an important factor of syntax, will also merit due consideration in describ­ing the distributional value of various kind of subordinate clauses.

It is to be noted that disagreement over the classification of sub-clauses is based not on conflicting observations in language learning but rather on different linguistic approaches to the study of syntax.

There are obvious reasons for describing sub-clauses proceeding from the similarity of their functions with those of parts of the sentence. Analysis of clause patterns from this angle of view seems most helpful and instructive.