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connections of the predicative lines of the sentence, i.e. by the sentential polyprcdication.
Each predicative unit in a composite sentence makes up a clause in it, so that a clause as part of a composite
sentence corresponds, to a separate sentence as part of a contextual sequence. E.g.:
When I sat down to dinner I looked for an opportunity to slip in casually the information that I had by
accident run across the Drifiields; but news travelled fast in Blackstable (S. Maugham).
The cited composite sentence includes four clauses which are related to one another on different semantic
grounds. The sentences underlying the clauses are the following.
I sat down to dinner. I looked for an opportunity to slip in casually the information. I had by accident run
across the Drifiields. News travelled fast in Blackstable.
The correspondence of a predicative clause to a separate sentence is self-evident. On the other hand, the
correspondence of a composite sentence to a genuine, logically connected sequence of simple sentences
(underlying its clauses) is not evident at all; moreover, such kind of correspondence is in fact not obligatory,
which is the very cause of the existence of the composite sentence in a language. Indeed, in the given example
the independent sentences reconstructed from the predicative clauses do not make up any coherently presented
situational unity; they are just so many utterances each expressing an event of self-sufficient significance. By
way of rearrangement and the use of semantic connectors we may make them into a more or less explanatory
situational sequence, but the exposition of the genuine logic of events, i.e. their presentation as natural parts of a
unity achieved by the composite sentence will not be, and is not to be replaced in principle. Cf:.
I ran by accident across the Driffields. At some time later on I sat down to dinner. While participating in the
general conversation, I looked for an opportunity to slip in casually the information about my meeting them.
But news travelled fast in Blackstable.
The logical difference between the given composite sentence and its contextually coherent de-compositional
presentation is that whereas the composite sentence exposes as its logical centre, i.e. the core of its purpose of
communication, the intention of the speaker to inform his table-companions of a certain fact (which turns out to
be already known to them), the sentential sequence expresses the events in their natural temporal succession,
which actually destroys the original purpose of communication. Any formation of a sentential sequence more
equivalent to the given composite sentence by its semantic status than the one shown above has to be expanded
by additional elucidative prop-utterances with back-references; and all the same, the resulting contextual string,
if it is intended as a real informational substitute for the initial composite, will hardly be effected without the
help of some kind of essentially composite sentence constructions included in it (let the reader himself try to
construct an equivalent textual sequence meeting the described semantic requirements).
As we see, the composite sentence in its quality of a structural unit of language is indispensable for language
by its own purely semantic merits, let alone its terseness, as well as intellectual elegance of expression.
§ 2. As is well known, the use of composite sentences, especially long and logically intricate ones, is
characteristic of literary written speech rather than colloquial oral speech. This unquestionable fact is explained
by three reasons: one relating to the actual needs of expression; one relating to the possibilities of production;
and one relating to the conditions of perception.
That the composite sentence structure answers the special needs of written mode of lingual expression is
quite evident. It is this type of speech that deals with lengthy reasonings, descriptions, narrations, all presenting
abundant details of intricate correlations of logical premises and inferences, of situational foreground and
background, of sequences of events interrupted by cross-references and parenthetical comments. Only a
composite sentence can adequately and within reasonable bounds of textual space fulfil these semantic
requirements.
Now, the said requirements, fortunately, go together with the fact that in writing it is actually possible to
produce long composite sentences of complicated, but logically flawless structure (the second of the advanced
reasons). This is possible here because the written sentence, while in the process of being produced, is open to
various alterations: it allows corrections of slips and errors; it can be subjected to curtailing or expanding; it
admits of rearranging and reformulating one's ideas; in short, it can be prepared. This latter factor is of crucial
importance, so that when considering the properties of literary written speech we must always bear it in mind.
Indeed, from the linguistic point of view written speech is above all prepared, or "edited" speech: it is due to no
other quality than being prepared before its presentation to the addressee that this mode of speech is structurally
so tellingly different from colloquial oral speech. Employing the words in their broader sense, we may say that
literary written speech is not just uttered and gone, but is always more carefully or less carefully composed in
advance, being meant for a future use of the reader, often for his repeated use. In contrast to this, genuine
colloquial oral speech is uttered each time in an irretrievably complete and final form, each time for one