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should be looked upon as merged with the corresponding filler-subordinate clauses. Thus, among the principal
clauses there should be distinguished merger principal clauses and non-merger principal clauses, the former
characterizing complex sentences with clausal deployment of their main parts, the latter characterizing complex
sentences with clausal deployment of their secondary parts.
§ 3. The principal clause dominates the subordinate clause positionally, but it doesn't mean that by its
syntactic status it must express the central informative part of the communication. The information perspective
in the simple sentence does not repeat the division of its constituents into primary and secondary, and likewise
the information perspective of the complex sentence is not bound to duplicate the division of its clauses into
principal and subordinate. The actual division of any construction, be it simple or otherwise, is effected in the
context, so it is as part of a continual text that the complex sentence makes its clauses into rheme-rendering and
theme-rendering at the complex-sentence information level.
When we discussed the problem of the actual division of the sentence, we pointed out that in a neutral
context the rhematic part of the sentence tends to be placed somewhere near the end of it (see Ch. XXII, §4).
This holds true both for the simple and complex sentences, so that the order of clauses plays an important role
in distributing primary and secondary information among them. Cf.:
The boy was friendly with me because I allowed him to keep the fishing line.
      In this sentence approached as part of stylistically neutral text the principal clause placed in the front
position evidently expresses the starting point of the information delivered, while the subordinate clause of
cause renders the main sentential idea, namely, the speaker's explanation of the boy's attitude. The
"contraposition" presupposed by the actual division of the whole sentence is then like this: "Otherwise the boy
wouldn't have been friendly". Should the clause-order of the utterance be reversed, the informative roles of the
clauses will be re-shaped accordingly:
As I allowed the boy to keep the fishing line, he was friendly with me.
Of course, the clause-order, the same as word-order in general, is not the only means of indicating the
correlative informative value of clauses in complex sentences; intonation plays here also a crucial role, and it
goes together with various lexical and constructional rheme-forming elements, such as emphatic particles,
constructions of meaningful antithesis, patterns of logical accents of different kinds.
Speaking of the information status of the principal clause, it should be noted that even in unemphatic speech
this predicative unit is often reduced to a sheer introducer of the subordinate clause, the latter expressing
practically all the essential information envisaged by the communicative purpose of the whole of the sentence.
Cf.:
You see that mine is by far the most miserable lot. Just fancy that James has proposed to Mary! You know,
kind sir, that I am bound to fasting and abstinence.
The principal clause-introducer in sentences like these performs also the function of keeping up the
conversation, i.e. of maintaining the immediate communicative connection with the listener. This function is
referred to as "phatic". Verbs of speech and especially thought are commonly used in phatic principals to
specify "in passing" the speaker's attitude to the information rendered by their rhe-matic subordinates:
I think there's much truth in what we hear about the matter. I’ sure I can't remember her name now.
Many of these introducer principals can be re-shaped into parenthetical clauses on a strictly equivalent basis
by a mere change of position:
There's much truth, I think, in what we hear about the matter. I can't remember her name now, I’ sure.
§ 4. Of the problems discussed in linguistic literature in connection with the complex sentence, the central
one concerns the principles of classification of subordinate clauses. Namely, the two different bases of
classification are considered as competitive in this domain: the first is functional, the second is categorial.
According to the functional principle, subordinate clauses are to be classed on the analogy of the positional
parts of the simple sentence, since it is the structure of the simple sentence that underlies the essential structure
of the complex sentence (located at a higher level). In particular, most types of subordinate clauses meet the
same functional question-tests as the parts of the simple sentence. The said analogy, certainly, is far from being
absolute, because no subordinate clause can exactly repeat the specific character of the corresponding non-
clausal part of the sentence; moreover, there is a deep difference in the functional status even between different
categorial types of the same parts of the sentence, one being expressed by a word-unit, another by a word-
group, still another by a substitute. Cf.:
You can see my state. > You can see my wretched state. > You can see my state being wretched. > You
can see that my state is wretched. > You can see that. > What can you see?
Evidently, the very variety of syntactic forms united by a central function and separated by specific sub-
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