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prepared and edited, and more often than not it
is directly reproduced from the written text, or else from its
epito mized version (theses). This intermediary written-oral speech should be given a special linguistic name,
for which we suggest the term "scripted speech", i.e. speech read from the script. Here belong such forms of
lingual communication as public report speech, lecturer speech, preacher speech, radio- and television-
broadcast speech, each of them existing in a variety of subtypes.
By way of example let us take the following passage from President Woodrow Wilson's address to the
Congress urging it to authorize the United States' entering the World War (1917):
But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried
nearest our hearts, - for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own
governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of
free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
The text presents a typical case of political scripted speech with a clear tinge of solemnity, its five
predicative units being complicated by parallel constructions of homogeneous objects (for-phrases) adding to
its high style emphasis.
Compare the above with a passage from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's second inaugural address
(1937):
In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens - a substantial part of its whole population - who at this
very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.
The sentence is not a long one, but its bookish background, although meant for oral uttering before an
audience, is most evident: a detached appositional phrase, consecutive subordination, the very nature of the last
appositional clausal complex of commenting type, all these features being carefully prepared to give the
necessary emphasis to the social content of the utterance aimed at a public success.
Compare one more example - a passage from Bernard Shaw's paper read before the Medico-Legal Society
in London (1909):
Nevertheless, trade in medical advice has never been formally recognized, and never will be; for you must
realize that, whereas competition in ordinary trade and business is founded on an elaborate theoretic
demonstration of its benefits, there has never been anyone from Adam Smith to our own time who has
attempted such a demonstration with regard to the medical profession. The idea of a doctor being a tradesman
with a pecuniary interest in your being ill is abhorrent to every thoughtful person.
The scripted nature of the cited sentential sequence is clearly seen from its arrangement as an expressive
climax built upon a carefully balanced contrastive composite construction.
§ 5. We have hitherto defended the thesis of the composite sentence of increased complexity being
specifically characteristic of literary written speech. On the other hand, we must clearly understand that the
composite sentence as such is part and parcel of the general syntactic system of language, and its use is an
inalienable feature of any normal expression of human thought in intercourse. This is demonstrated by cases of
composite sentences that could not be adequately reduced to the corresponding sets of separate simple
sentences in their natural contexts (see above). Fictional literature, presenting in its works a reflection of
language as it is spoken by the people, gives us abundant illustrations of the broad use of composite sentences
in genuine colloquial speech both of dialogue and monologue character.
Composite sentences display two principal types of construction: hypotaxis (subordination) and parataxis
(coordination). Both types are equally representative of colloquial speech, be it refined by education or not. In
this connection it should be noted that the initial rise of hypotaxis and parataxis as forms of composite
sentences can be traced back to the early stages of language development, i.e. to the times when language had
no writing. Profuse illustrations of the said types of syntactic relations are contained, for instance, in the Old
English epic "Beowulf" (dated presumably from the end of the VII c. A.D.) As is known, the text of the poem
shows all the basic forms of sentential composition including the grammatically completed presentation of
reported speech, connection of clauses on various nominal principles (objective, subjective, predicative,
attributive), connection of clauses on various adverbial principles (temporal, local, conditional, causal, etc.).
E.g.:
Sec3e ic pe to so?e, sunu Ec3lafes,
paet naefre 3rendel swa fela ryr sefremede,
atol ?l?, ealdre pinum,
Hyn?o op Heorote, 3if pin hi waere,