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137
immediate and fleeting occasion.
We have covered the first two reasons explaining the composite sentence of increased complexity as a
specific feature of written speech. The third reason, referring to the conditions of perception, is inseparable
from the former two. Namely, if written text provides for the possibility for its producer to return to the
beginning of each sentence with the aim of assessing its form and content, of rearranging or recomposing it
altogether, it also enables the reader, after he has run through the text for the first time, to go back to its starting
line and re-read it with as much care as will be required for the final understanding of each item and logical
connection expressed by its wording or implied by its construction. Thus, the length limit imposed on the
sentence by the recipient's immediate (operative) memory can in writing be practically neglected; the volume of
the written sentence is regulated not by memory limitations as such, but by the considerations of optimum
logical balance and stylistic well-formedness.
§ 3. Logic and style being the true limiters of the written sentence volume, two dialectically contrasted
active tendencies can be observed in the sentence construction of modern printed texts. According to the first
tendency, a given unity of reasons in meditation, a natural sequence of descriptive situations or narrative events
is to be reflected in one composite sentence, however long and structurally complicated it might prove.
According to the second, directly opposite tendency, for a given unity of reflected events or reasons, each of
them is to be presented by one separate simple sentence, the whok complex of reflections forming a
multisentential paragraph. The two tendencies are always in a state of confrontation, and which of them will
take an upper hand in this or that concrete case of text production has to be decided out of various
considerations of form and meaning relating to both contextual and con-situational conditions (including,
among other things, the general purpose of the work in question, as well as the preferences and idiosyncrasies
of its users).
Observe, for instance, the following complex sentence of mixed narrative-reasoning nature:
Once Mary waved her hand as she recognized her driver, but he took no notice of her, only whipping his
horses the harder, and she realized with a rather helpless sense of futility that so far as other people were
concerned she must be considered in the same light as her uncle, and that even if she tried to walk to Boduin or
Launceston no one would receive her, and the door would be shut in her face (D. du Maurier).
The sentence has its established status in the expressive context of the novel, and in this sense it is
unrearrangeable. On the other hand, its referential plane can be rendered by a multisentential paragraph, plainer
in form, but somewhat more natural to the unsophisticated perceptions:
Once Mary recognized her driver. She waved her hand to him. But he took no notice of her. He only
whipped his horses the harder. And she realized that so far as other people were concerned she must be
considered in the same light as her uncle. This gave her a rather helpless sense of futility. Even if she tried to
walk to Boduin or Launceston no one would receive her. Quite the contrary, the door would be shut in her face.
One long composite sentence has been divided into eight short sentences. Characteristically, though, in our
simplification we could not do without the composite sentence structure as such: two of the sentential units in
the adaptation (respectively, the fourth and the sixth) have retained their compositive features, and these
structural properties seem to be indispensable for the functional adequacy of the rearranged passage.
The cited example of syntactic re-formation of text will help us- formulate the following composition rule
of good non-fiction (neutral) prose style: in neutral written speech each sentence construction should be as
simple as can be permitted by the semantic context.
§ 4. We have emphatically pointed out in due course (see Ch. I) the oral basis of human language: the
primary lingual matter is phonetical, so that each and every lingual utterance given in a graphic form has
essentially a representative character, its speech referent being constructed of so many phones organized in a
rhythmo-melodical sequence. On the other hand, and this has also been noted before, writing in a literary
language acquires a relatively self-sufficient status in so far as a tremendous proportion of what is actually
written in society is not meant for an oral reproduction at all: though read and re-read by those to whom it has
been addressed, it is destined to remain "silent" for ever. The "silent" nature of written speech with all its
peculiarities leads to the development of specifically written features of language, among which, as we have
just seen, the composite sentence of increased complexity occupies one of the most prominent places. Now, as
a natural consequence of this development, the peculiar features of written speech begin to influence oral
speech, whose syntax becomes liable to display ever more syntactic properties directly borrowed from writing.
Moreover, as a result of active interaction between oral and written forms of language, a new variety of
speech has arisen that has an intermediary status. This type of speech, being explicitly oral, is at the same time
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