The complex sentence as a polypredicative construction. The matrix/insert sentences. The principal/subordinate clause. Semantic types of subordinators. The zero subordinator

Composite sentences as polypredicative constructions. Subordinative polypredication (hypotaxis) and coordinative polypredication (parataxis). Complex/compound/cumulative/semi-composite sentences. Syndeton and asyndeton.

Composite sentences differ from simple sentences by the number of predicative lines: simple sentences are monopredicative syntactic constructions, formed by only one predicative line, while composite sentences are polypredicative syntactic constructions, formed by two or more predicative lines, each with a subject and a predicate of its own. This means, that the composite sentence reflects two or more situations making up a unity.

Each predicative unit in a composite sentence forms a clause. A clause as a part of a composite sentence corresponds to a separate sentence: This is the issue I planned to discuss with you. - This is the issue. I planned to discuss it with you. The purpose of communication in the composite sentence above is the presentation of a certain topic.

There are two principal types of composite sentences: 1) complex and 2) compound.

- In compound sentences, the clauses are connected on the basis of coordinative connections (parataxis). By coordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically equal rank, i.e. equipotently (equipotent, or coordinative phrases).

- In complex sentences, the clauses are united on the basis of subordinative connections (hypotaxis). By subordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically unequal rank, one of which dominates another (dominational, or subordinative phrases).

The connections between the clauses in a composite sentence may be effected syndetically, i.e. by means of special connecting words, conjunctions and other conjunctional words or word-combinations, or asyndetically, i.e. without any conjunctional words used.

There is some controversy concerning the status of syndeton and asyndeton versus coordination and subordination. According to the traditional view, all composite sentences are to be subdivided on the upper level into compound and complex, and on the lower level of subdivision each type is represented by syndetic and asyndetic connections. This view was challenged by N. S. Pospelov and some other Russian linguists, who treated this subdivision in the opposite way: at the higher level of classification all composite sentences should be divided into syndetic and asyndetic, while at the lower level the syndetic composite sentences (and only these) should be divided into compound and complex ones in accordance with the connective words used. This approach was also challenged, in particular, by B. A. Ilyish, who pointed out the mixture of two different criteria – formal and semantic - in both classifications. Indeed, the semantic equality of syndetic and asyndetic constructions is unquestionable in the following example: This is the issue I planned to discuss with you. – This is the issue, which I planned to discuss with you; both sentences include the subordinate attributive clause. Besides, asyndetic connection of clauses often displays its own specific functional value, which supports arguments for the existence of asyndetic polypredication.

Alongside the two basic types of composite sentences there is one more type of polypredicative construction, in which the connections between the clauses are rather loose, syntactically detached: the following clause is like an afterthought, an expansion or a comment to the proceeding clause. In oral speech its formal sign is often the tone of sentential completion, followed by a shorter pause. In written speech such clauses are usually separated by semi-final punctuation marks: a dash, a colon, a semi-colon or brackets: I wasn’t going to leave; I’d only just arrived. This type of connection is called cumulation, and such composite sentences can be called 3) cumulative. The status of cumulative sentences is intermediary between composite sentences proper and combinations of sentences in supra-sentential constructions. Various parenthetical clauses of introductory and commenting-deviational semantics can be treated as specific cumulative clauses, which give a background to the essential information of the expanded clause: As I have already told you, they are just friends.

Alongside the “completely” composite sentence, built up by two or more fully predicative lines, there are polypredicative constructions, in which one predicative line may be partially predicative (potentially predicative, semi-predicative), as, for example, in sentences with various verbid complexes: I heard him singing in the backyard. Such sentences actually render two situations and present two predicative lines blended with each other. This can be demonstrated in explanatory transformations of these constructions into composite sentences: I heard him, when he was singing in the backyard; He was singing in the backyard and I heard him. The transformations show that such sentences are derived from two base sentences and that their systemic status can be treated as intermediary between the simple sentence and the composite sentence. They can be defined as 4) “semi-composite sentences ”.

The complex sentence is a polypredicative construction built on the principle of subordination (hypotaxis). In paradigmatic presentation, the derivational history of the complex sentence is as follows: two or more base sentences are clausalized and joined into one construction; one of them performs the role of a matrix in relation to the others, the insert sentences. The matrix sentence becomes the principal clause of the complex sentence and the insert sentences becomes its subordinate clauses: The team arrived. + It caused a sensation. - When the team arrived, it caused a sensation.

The minimal complex sentence includes two clauses: the principal and the subordinate. This is the main type of complex sentences, first, in terms of frequency, and, second, in terms of its paradigmatic status, because a complex sentence of any volume can be analyzed into a combination of two-clause complex sentence units.

The principal clause positionally dominates the subordinate clause, which is embedded into it: even if the principal clause is incomplete and is represented by just one word, the subordinate clauses fill in the open positions, introduced by the principal clause, in the underlying simple sentence pattern: What you see is what you get - What you see (the subject) is (the predicate) what you get (the object). Semantically, the two clauses are interconnected and form a semantico-syntactic unity.

The dominant positional status of the principal clause does not mean that it expresses the central informative part of the communication: any clause of a complex sentence can render its rheme or its theme. As in a simple sentence, in a neutral context the preceding part renders the starting point of communication, the theme, and the following part, placed near the end of the sentence, renders the most important information, the rheme: What he likes most about her is her smile. - Her smile is what he likes most about her. In the first sentence the principal part is rhematic, and in the second sentence - the subordinate clause. Besides the clause-order, as with word-order in general, there are other means of expressing the correlative informative value of clauses in complex sentences, such as intonation, special constructions, emphatic particles and others.

The informative value of a principal clause may be reduced to the mere introduction of a subordinate clause; for example, the principal clause can perform the “phatic” function, i.e. the function of keeping up the conversation, of maintaining the immediate communicative connection with the listener, e.g.: I think you are a great parent; in this sentence, the basic information is rendered by the rhematic subordinate clause, while the principal clause is phatic, specifying the speaker’s attitude to the information.

Different types of complex sentences are distinguished, first of all, on the basis of their subordinate clause types. Subordinate clauses are classified on two mutually complementary bases: on the functional principle and on the categorial principle.

1) According to the functional principle, subordinate clauses are divided on the analogy of the positional parts of the complex sentence: What you see is what you get. - What you see (the subject, the subject subordinate clause) is what you get (the object, the object subordinate clause).

2) According to the categorial principle, subordinate clauses are divided by their inherent nominative properties. Subordinate clauses can be divided into three categorial-semantic groups: substantive-nominal, qualification-nominal and adverbial.

- Substantive-nominal subordinate clauses name an event as a certain fact: What you do is very important (What is very important?)

- Qualification-nominal subordinate clauses name a certain event, which is a characteristic to some substance, represented either by a word or by another clause: Where is the letter that came today? (What letter?)

- Adverbial subordinate clauses name a certain event, which is a characteristic to another event, to a process or a quality: I won’t leave until you come.

Subordinating connectors are subdivided into two basic types: pronominal words and pure conjunctions. Pronominal connective words occupy a notional position in the derived sentence; for example, some of them replace a certain antecedent (i.e. a word or phrase to which the connector refers back) in the principal clause: The man whom I met yesterday surprised me. Pure subordinate conjunctions do not occupy a notional position in the derived sentence: She said that she would come early. Some connectors are bifunctional, i.e. used both as conjunctions and as conjunctive substitutes: She said that she would come early - Where is the letter that came today?

Semantically, subordinators (both conjunctions and conjunctive substitutes) are subdivided in correspondence with the categorial type of the subordinate clauses which they introduce: there are 1) substantive-nominal and qualification-nominal clausalizers (conjunctions and pronominal words), which introduce the event-fact, and 2) adverbial clausalizers (conjunctions), showing relational characteristics of events. Some connective words can be used both as nominal connectors and as adverbial connectors: Do you know when they are coming? (What do you know?) – We’ll meet when the new house is finished (When shall we meet?).

Together with these, the zero subordinator should be named, whose polyfunctional status is similar to the status of the subordinator that: She said that she would come early. – She said Ø she would come early.

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