To exemplify the cited theses, let us take as a derivation sentence-base the construction The thing bothers me. This sentence; in the above oppositional sense, is predicatively "non-loaded", or has the "zero predicative load". The predicative structure of the sentence can be expanded by the expression of the modal subject-action relation, for instance, the ability relation. The result is: → The thins can bother me; the predicative load of the sentence has grown to 1. This construction, in its turn, can be used as a derivation base for a sentence of a higher predicative complexity, for instance, the feature of unreality can be added to it: → The thing could bother me (now). The predicative load of die sentence has grown to 2. Though functionally not simple, the sentence still presents a more or less ordinary English construction. To continue with our complicating it, we may introduce in the sentence the feature of passivity: → Icould be bothered (by the thing now). The predicative semantics expressed has quite clearly changed into something beyond the ordinary, the sentence requires a special context to sound natural. Finally, to complicate the primary construction still further, we may introduce a negation in it: → Icould not be bothered (by the thing now). As a result we are faced by a construction that, in the contextual conditions of real speech, expresses an intricate set of functional meanings and stylistic connotations. Cf;.
"...Wilmet and Henrietta Bentworth have agreed to differ already." - "What about? "-"Well, I couldn't be bothered, but I think it was about the P.M., or was it Portulaca? - they differ about everything" (J. Galsworthy).
The construction is indeed semantically complicated; but all its meaningful complexity is linguistically resolved by the demonstrated gemantico-syntactic oppositional analysis showing the stage-to-stage growth of the total functional meaning of the sentence in the course of its paradigmatic derivation.
C H A P T E R XXVI
COMPOSITE SENTENCE AS A POlYPREDICATIVE CONSTRUCTION
§ 1. The composite sentence, as different from the simple sentence, is formed by two or more predicative lines. Being a polypredicative construction, it expresses a complicated act of thought, i.e. an act of mental activity which falls into two or more intellectual efforts closely combined with one another. In terms of situations and events this means that the composite sentence reflects two or more elementary situational events viewed as making up a unity; the constitutive connections of the events are expressed by the constitutive 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 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 prepared and edited, and more often than not itis 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.