Languages & Linguistics
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence is a sentence that contains an independent clause and at least one dependent clause. The independent clause can stand alone as a complete sentence, while the dependent clause relies on the independent clause for its meaning. Complex sentences allow for more complexity and variety in sentence structure, enhancing the expressiveness of language.
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eBook - PDFA Critical Account of English Syntax
Grammar, Meaning, Text
- Keith Brown, Jim Miller(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Edinburgh University Press(Publisher)
206 Sentences and clauses SENTENCES AND CLAUSES: INTRODUCTION Both clause and sentence are very traditional units of grammatical description and analysis and both are very difficult to define. (By a rough reckoning more than two hundred definitions of ‘sentence’ have been proposed.) Many analysts take sentences as basic and define them as the largest unit subject to rules of grammar. A clause is then said to be a unit that can be seen as like a sentence in structure, or as resulting from some sentence structure being reduced. Other analysts take the concept of construction as basic, define clauses as a grammatical units incorporating some construction, say agent-patient as in The dog barked or The python attacked the crocodile , and then define the sentence as the largest grammatical unit. Here we take the concept of construction as basic. † Constructions are arrangements of smaller bits and pieces into bigger chunks: which sort of units combine, how many, and in what order. Word forms are constructions consisting of stems and roots, prefixes and suffixes, as in deselections – de + select + ion + s . The internal structure of words is not part of syntactic analysis; we are concerned rather with how whole words combine to make phrases, how phrases combine to make clauses and how clauses combine to make sentences. Our central syntactic unit or construction is the clause. Our reasons for this decision are these. Dependency relations between words and the distributional properties of words and phrases are densest inside single clauses. Dependency relations occasionally cross from one clause to another or even, in written texts, from one sentence to another but these long-distance connections are quite a minor phenomenon. The classic criteria for distribution – substitution and transposition – apply inside single clauses. In books on formal syntax, discussions of constitu-ent structure and distribution almost always offer examples consisting of a single clause.
eBook - PDF- Sandra A. Thompson, Joseph Sung-Yul Park, Charles N. Li(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- University of California Press(Publisher)
6. Complex SentenceS Complex Sentences consist of more than one clause, where clause can be defined as a predicate and its arguments. There are two types of Complex Sentences in Wappo: (1) those in which the constituent clauses are conjoined, that is, in which both clauses have the properties of independent clauses; (2) those in which one clause is dependent that is, has at least one of the following three characteristics: (a) Its verb is a non-finite, or dependent (DEP), form. Dependent verb forms typically drop the word-final glottal stop, as can be seen in the verb form hak'se in the example below, whose form in an independent clause would be hak'se?: (1) ah [ ce k'ew i hak 1 -se ] hatis-khi? 1SG:NOM DEM man 1SG like-DUR:DEP know -STAT 7 know that the man likes me' (r!06) (b) Its subject is in the zero-marked (i.e., accusative) case. (c) If the main clause subject is a third person which is co-referential with an expressed referent in the dependent clause, that dependent clause mention must be the third person co-referential pronoun me (see section 3.9.3). 6.1 Conjunctions Conjoining of two clauses in Wappo, as in many other languages, is often accomplished by juxtaposition, as in (2) -(5), for example:
- Timothy E. Moore(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
THE GENESIS OF Complex SentenceS 1 J O H N L I M B E R University of New Hampshire One of the most interesting and important aspects of language acquisition is the child's development of an ability to produce and understand Complex Sentences of various kinds. Lees (1960) puts his finger on perhaps the most important issue, one distinguishing human language from many other symbolic systems. Even if we disregard all those nominal expressions employed with purely connotative meaning, that is, those which do not refer to any object, and confine our attention to nouns which are names of things, it is clear that no extant lexicon contains anywhere near enough expressions of this kind to suffice even for ordinary daily life. We cannot get along with any single common noun to refer to a familiar object, but must have at every moment modifiers with which to construct new, more complex names to use for all the specific instances of that object which we encounter and talk about [p. xviil. From many reports on early syntactic development, it would seem that most children display the ability to construct various complex nominal constructions—syntactically generated names—as well as other complex constructions out of simpler components well before their third birthday •This research was done at the Department of Psychology, M.I.T., where the author is a research associate. It was supported by a grant to Dr. J. A. Fodor from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD 05168). I take this opportunity to thank Dr. J. A. Fodor, Dr. M. F. Garrett, and especially my research assistant, Rhoda Goodwin for their contributions to this work. 170 John Limber (3;0). Leopold (1949b), for example, in his classic study, remarks about his daughter of 2 years, 11 months (2; 11) that: . . .with the mastery of Complex Sentences, the linguistic development has reached the last stage.
- Dave Kemper, Verne Meyer, John Van Rys, Patrick Sebranek(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
And b. So c. Yet 7. Which of these simple sentences are not joined correctly into a compound sentence? a. It’s a beautiful night; the stars really do shine brighter away from the city. b. It’s a beautiful night and the stars really do shine brighter away from the city. c. It’s a beautiful night, for the stars really do shine brighter away from the city. 15.4 Compound Sentences 291 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 15.5 Complex Sentences A Complex Sentence shows a dependent relationship between two ideas. Instead of joining two sentences as equal ideas, a Complex Sentence shows how one idea depends on the other. � Using a Subordinating Conjunction You can create a Complex Sentence by placing a subordinating conjunction before the clause that is less important. Table 15.1 shows common subordinating conjunctions: The subordinating conjunction shows how one sentence (the dependent clause) depends on the other (the independent clause) to make sense. Remember, a clause is a group of words with a subject and a verb. A dependent clause does not express a complete thought, while an independent clause does. Two Simple Sentences: We looked repeatedly. We found no instructions. Complex Sentence: Though we looked repeatedly, we found no instructions. NOTE: The subordinating conjunction begins the dependent clause, but the two clauses can be in either order. When the dependent clause comes second, it is usually not separated by a comma. Complex Sentence: We found no instructions though we looked repeatedly.
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