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139
sefa swa searo-im, swa pu self talast;
ac he hafa? onfunden, paet he pa faeh?e ne pearf,
atole -praece, eower
leo?e swi?e onsittan, Si3e-Scyldin3a.*
* From: Beowulf/Ed by AJ Wyatt. New edition revised with introduction and notes by R.W. Chambers. Cambr, 1933, verses 590-
597.
Compare the tentative prose translation of the cited text into Modern English (with the corresponding re-
arrangements of the word-order patterns):
Truly I say onto thee, oh Son Egglaf, that never would Grendel, the abominable monster, have done so many
terrible deeds to your chief, (so many) humiliating acts in Heorot, if thy soul (and) heart had been as bold as
thou thyself declarest; but he has found that he need not much fear the hostile sword-attack of your people, the
Victorious Skildings.
Needless to say, the forms of composite sentences in prewriting periods of language history cannot be taken
as a proof that the structure of the sentence does not develop historically in terms of perfecting its expressive
qualities. On the contrary, the known samples of Old English compared with their modern rendering are quite
demonstrative of the fact that the sentence does develop throughout the history of language; moreover, they
show that the nature and scope of the historical structural change of the sentence is not at all a negligible matter.
Namely, from the existing lingual materials we see that the primitive, not clearly identified forms of
subordination and coordination, without, distinct border points between separate sentences, have been
succeeded by such constructions of syntactic composition as are distinguished first and foremost by the clear-
cut logic of connections between their clausal predicative parts. However, these materials, and among them the
cited passage, show us at the same time that the composite sentence, far from being extraneous to colloquial
speech, takes its origin just in the oral colloquial element of human speech as such: it is inherent in the very oral
nature of developing language.
§ 6. The two main types of the connection of clauses in a composite sentence, as has been stated above, are
subordination and coordination. By coordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically equal rank,
i.e. equipotently; by subordination, as units of unequal rank, one being categorially dominated by the other. In
terms of the positional structure of the sentence it means that by subordination one of the clauses (subordinate)
is placed in a notional position of the other (principal). This latter characteristic has an essential semantic
implication clarifying the difference between the two types of polypredication in question. As a matter of fact, a
subordinate clause, however important the information rendered by it might be for the whole communication,
presents it as naturally supplementing the information of the principal clause, i.e. as something completely
premeditated and prepared even before its explicit expression in the utterance. This is of especial importance
for post-positional subordinate clauses of circumstantial semantic nature. Such clauses may often shift their
position without a change in semantico-syntactic status. Cf.:
I could not help blushing with embarrassment when I looked at him. > When I looked at him I could not
help blushing with embarrassment. The board accepted the decision, though it didn't quite meet their plans. >
Though the decision didn't quite meet their plans, the board accepted it.
The same criterion is valid for subordinate clauses with a fixed position in the sentence. To prove the
subordinate quality of the clause in the light of this consideration, we have to place it in isolation - and see that
the isolation is semantically false. E.g.:
But all the books were so neatly arranged, they were so clean, that I had the impression they were very
seldom read. > *But all the books were so neatly arranged, they were so clean. That I had the impression they
were very seldom read. I fancy that life is more amusing now than it was forty years ago. > *I fancy that life is
more amusing now. Than it was forty years ago.
As for coordinated clauses, their equality in rank is expressed above all in each sequential clause explicitly
corresponding to a new effort of thought, without an obligatory feature of premeditation. In accordance with the
said quality, a sequential clause in a compound sentence refers to the whole of the leading clause, whereas a
subordinate clause in a complex sentence, as a rule, refers to one notional constituent (expressed by a word or a
phrase) in a principal clause [Khaimovich, Rogovskaya, 278]. It is due to these facts that the position of a
coordinate clause is rigidly fixed in all cases, which can be used as one of the criteria of coordination in
distinction to subordination. Another probe of rank equality of clauses in coordination is a potential possibility
for any coordinate sequential clause to take either the copulative conjunction and or the adversative conjunction
but as introducers. Cf.:
That sort of game gave me horrors, so I never could play it. > That sort of game gave me horrors, and I