Complex Sentences with Adverbial Clauses

Adverbial clauses refer to a verb and adjective or an adverb of the principal clause. They are usually joined to the principal clause by means of subordinating conjunctions; except sometimes adverbial clauses of condition and result.

I. Adverbial Clauses of Time and Condition

To express a future action the Present Tense is used in clauses of time and condition in English. The child will stay with me till his mother comes.

In sentences of unreal condition different forms of the subjunctive mood are used in English. The choice of forms depends on the time of the action and the degree of unreality.

1. If I had time, I should finish the book today.

2. If I had had time yesterday, I should have finished the book.

II. Adverbial Clauses of Place are introduced by ‘where’, ‘whenever’ or preposition + ‘where’, ‘whenever’. An adverbial clause of place is the only type of adverbial clause in which a preposition is used alongside of a conjunctive adverb. E.g. So I went to where she was. Clauses of place can also be used in a metaphorical sense, that is, the place indicated may not be a place at all, but a certain condition of action.: e.g. Where there is a will there is a way.

3) There are also clauses of cause and purpose, introduced by simple conjunctions: because, as, since (cause), that, lest (purpose) and by phrase conjunctions: for the reason that, seeing that, on the ground that (cause), in order that, so that (purpose).

Parenthetical clauses functioning as a parenthesis. E.g. It is part 10, I think.

Inserted Clauses

They are neither subordinate nor coordinate ones, giving some additional information: Before he went down – patent leather was his final choice – he looked at himself critically in the glass.

Sentences with direct speech are regarded by some scholars as simple, others interpret them as complex sentences with an object clause joined asyndetically or as compound sentences.

Lecture 14

Word Order

Word order is an important means of forming a coherent utterance. There are several factors which may determine the arrangements of elements in a sentence: grammatical, communicative, psychological, stylistic, rhythmic, etc. The most important however are the grammatical and the communicative factors. As a grammatical device word order marks the syntactic relationships of words in a sentence. At the same time word order helps to present the communicative structure of a sentence. Sometimes a word order pattern lays particular stress on a certain element of the sentence thus making the sentence more expressive, more emotively charged. So we may distinguish three main functions of word order: grammatical, communicative and expressive.

In English there are more grammatical restrictions as to the position of the sentence elements, so that in such a language the grammatical function should be considered the leading function of word order.

There are two main word order patterns in an inflected language: subject-predicate (S-P) and predicate-subject (P-S). The former is commonly called direct word order, as to the latter, it is referred it is referred to as inverted, reversed, transposed (перемещенный). As is clear from the names some linguists consider the word order P-S as a deviation from the normal, which is not, the two patterns being the main word order patterns, equal in rights, but with different frequency of occurrence. The word order P-S is referred to here as an inverted word order (inversion). Structurally speaking, inversion may be full or partial. We speak of full inversion when the whole of the predicate precedes the subject. We have partial inversion if the subject is preceded by just a part of the predicate: e.g. Long did the hours seem while I waited Bronte and go she must.

The frequency of occurence of the word order pattern P-S is not so high as that of the pattern S-P. It is advisable to distinguish three functions of inversion, in accordance with the three main functions of word order: formal, communicative and expressive.

I. Formal inversion. It is employed to generate sentences, communicatively different from sentences with direct word order. We find formal inversion in:

1) Interrogative sentences: have you been talking to him?

2) Optative (желательный) sentences: …and may you never have a day’s luck wit them (Shaw).

3) Imperative sentences with the subject mentioned: Don’t you dare touch me!

II. Communicative inversion. It serves for the purpose of making the communicative center which in this case is placed at the end of the sentence. Here we can distinguish:

1) Inversion in sentences with the structure-filling word ‘there’. E.g. There came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac (Wild).

2) Inversion in elliptical sentences beginning with the word ‘so’, ‘neither’, ‘nor’. E.g. I wasn’t noticing. Nor was I.

3) Inversion with adverbials of place, time, manner placed at the beginning of a sentence. E.g. Just over a century and a half after King Alfred’s death came the Norman invasion.

4) Inversion of a compound nominal predicate with the predicative opening the sentence. E.g. Completely absent in this and throughout the book, is the role and action of class forces.

5) Inversion following direct speech. E.g. ‘Have you finished, old thing?’, said Clare.

III. Expressive inversion. Like communicative inversion, expressive inversion marks the communicative center. Besides, it changes the stylistic coloring of a sentence by making it more expressive. It is noteworthy that, unlike sentences with communicative inversion, sentences with expressive inversion have the communicative center placed at the beginning. It is possible to distinguish the following instances of expressive inversion:

1) Inversion in sentences beginning with an adverbial or an object emphatically stressed. E.g. Always had woman been attracted by something in his manner. Very often the first element has a restrictive or negative meaning (such words as scarcely, hardly, seldom, rarely, little, even, less, in vain, only, nor, by no means, nowhere, etc).

2) Inversion of the compound nominal predicate, the predicative being the communicative center. E.g. An unforgettable scene was the reunion of mothers with their evacuated children. Here also belongs inversion in clauses of concession and reason. E.g. Careful as she had been, Suthy had heard her.

3) Inversion in clauses of unreal emotion. E.g. Had it not been for the information, that Bosman had some hours before his death made a statement, there would have been little fear.

Inversion here is purely expressive, as the postfix cannot be considered the communicative center. As to the structure of inversion it depends on the following:

1) The function of inversion. Thus communicative inversion is always full.

2) The nature of the element opening the sentence. Restrictive and negative words opening the sentence always cause partial inversion. E.g. Never before had he seen such a cold, steady determination in her eyes.

3) The way the subject is expressed. Very often if the subject is expressed by a noun, full inversion is used, if the subject is a pronoun, the inversion is partial. E.g. In went the needle and I took my second pipe. In he hopped and laid the great ruby on the table.

Speaking about word order it is necessary to touch upon what can be termed as ‘shift’. Like the term ‘inversion’, it is a conventional term which is applied here to instances of the distant position of an adjunct in relation to its head-word as contrasted to the contact position.

A shift of a secondary part of a sentence is usually caused by communicative reasons and it may and it may not cause inversion of the principal parts, which is also connected with the communicative structure of the sentence. Cf. Slowly and sadly did the two friends return next day. Swiftly in and out of the dressing room the prize model flew, each time wearing a new costume.

An object usually appears at the beginning of the sentence when it is the theme, which does not cause inversion. E.g. His vest he arranged in the same place. Of his love Arthur would tell nothing.

If the object is restricting or negative in meaning, it is usually the communicative center. In this case inverted word order is used. E.g. Nothing do I know about it.

A direct object, if it is in the communicative center, may also be shifted to the very end of the sentence, thus following a prepositional object or even an adverbial. E.g. He left behind him a marked gloom.

Even more striking is a shift of a part of a syntactic complex, which is also caused by communicative reasons. E.g. This talk I felt to be partially theoretical.