Compound and Complex Sentences. Connectives

Compound and complex sentences existed in the English language since the earliest times. Even in the oldest texts we find numerous instances of coordination and subordination and a large inventory of subordinate clauses, subject clauses, object clauses, attributive clauses, adverbial clauses. And yet many constructions – especially in early original prose – look clumsy, loosely connected, disorderly and wanting precision, which is natural in a language whose written form had only begun to grow.

Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and, a conjunc­tion of a most general meaning, which could connect statements with various semantic relations. The ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES abound in successions of clauses or sentences all beginning with and, e.g.:

Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause (termed "correlation") was common in complex sentences:

Attributive clauses were joined to the principal clauses by means of various connectives, there being no special class of relative pronouns. The main connective was the indeclinable particle pe employed either alone or together with demonstrative and personal pronouns:

The pronouns could also be used to join the clauses without the par­ticle pe:

The pronoun and conjunction p æ t was used to introduce object clauses and adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words: oð ð et ‘until’,

er, p em pe ‘before’, p et ‘so that’ as in:

Some clauses are regarded as intermediate between coordi­nate and subordinate: they are joined asyndetically and their status is not clear:

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In the course of OE the structure of the complex sentence was considerably improved. Ælfric, the greatest writer of the late 10th – early 11th c., employed a variety of connectives indicating the relations between the clauses with greater clarity and precision.

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