Lesson 48: Complex sentences

Hittite attests a set of complex sentences in which (mostly) relative clauses (other subordinate clauses are also attested) appear in linear syntax to be within another subordinate (usually conditional, rarely temporal) clause or main clause. The relative clause can be preceded by a very limited array of constituents from the matrix clause, e.g., mān ‘if’ or the quotative particle ⸗wa(r). There are also examples which attest the conditional subordinator and the irrealis particle in two positions simultaneously, at the left edge of the whole sentence and in the conditional clause (= main clause for the relative clause). I provide a fine-grained descriptive and structural analysis of the structure and show that the type cannot be explained as bare indefinites, embedded relative clauses or parenthetic clauses. It is shown that, structurally, the sentences containing subordinate (mostly relative) clauses within other clauses are heterogenous and of three types. The difference lies in the elements that precede the relative clause and in the structure of the sentences, whereby a standard Hittite relative clause adjoins at different heights. All three types display the same mismatch between prosodic domains and syntax/semantics—the constituent that is part of the main clause from the semantic and syntactic perspective is prosodically part of the relative clause. Since there is a clause boundary delimiting the end of the subordinate clause within the main clause, it makes sense to treat the surface structure as a distinct taxonomic unit, which is correspondingly labelled a mismatch sentence. The new evidence allows us to obtain a fuller understanding of the Hittite left periphery than was previously possible. It thus offers an important window into hitherto unrecognized aspects of the underlying structure of the complex sentence in Hittite.

The problems of studying complex sentences, considered in the field of traditional syntax of Kyrgyz linguistics, are studied from different points of view and are not fully scientifically justified, which can be traced in general textbooks, scientific and theoretical works. Therefore, the relevance of the article is due to the need to study the issues of complex sentences in the framework of the syntax of the Kyrgyz language. In addition, some scientists note that the issue we are considering is still controversial among scientists. For example, the scientist M. V. Muratalieva, in her scientific work on “Complex Sentences in the Kyrgyz language”, published in the 1980s, identifies the main types of complex sentences and examines the differences between them. The paper describes the relationship between equal simple sentences that have independent semantic meanings as part of a compound sentence, and also considers the relationship between the main sentence and one or more subordinate clauses. The author sets the main goal of the study to study the possibility of using a simple sentence as part of a complex sentence separately, the presence of simple sentences in their structure and structure of features that distinguish them from complex sentences, and as a result, comes to the conclusion that it is unacceptable to separate individual parts of a complex sentence, thereby excluding the possibility of using and considering them outside of complex sentences. Thus, simple sentences in a compound sentence are closely interrelated with each other, forming a unity not only in semantic terms, but also in structural terms.

In this paper, we attempt to make a comprehensive and explicit generalization about the syntactic structure and semantic meaning of the te-clause in Japanese from the viewpoint of ”generative grammar”. Our study has led to the following conclusions:1. A te-clause functioning as a subordinate clause is analyzed as an infinite clause, as distinguished from a finite clause functioning as a main clause.2. A te-clause is not only used as a verb phrase (VP); therefore, it contains a subject.3. At the head of a finite phrase which functions as a main clause, ”ru/ta” may be used; meanwhile, at the head of a time phrase (TP), ”te” may be used.4. Under the assumption of the above-mentioned syntactic construct ion, the ”Projection principle”, the ”Extended Projection Principle” and the ”θ-criterion” in generative grammar may be satisfied.5. Under the assumption that all ”te-clauses” are either ”TP” or ”vP, ” the interpretation of the te-clause's semantic content , rather than being linked with ”syntactic construction,” is more likely to be linked with ”semantic interpretation” or ”pragmatic interpretation.”

Subordinate clauses of time with the conjunctions referring to a limit or boundary kol, iki, ligi can express not only relations of a sequence of events/situations or simultaneity, but also highlight duration and indicate efforts put into the performance of the action. Verbs in the main and subordinate clauses can make certain combinations of tense forms. The selection of a subordinate clause structure depends on the modality of the predicate in the main clause. In cases of epistemic modality, main and subordinate clauses are based on verb forms expressed by the same tense. Cases, when tense forms differ, in such sentences are concerned with the de dicto semantic relation. When the predicate of the main clause expresses deontic modality, for the subordinate clause of time the following type of structure is selected: a conjunction referring to a temporal limit or boundary + negation + verb in the past simple tense. Clauses of time are characterised by specific structural peculiarities and a higher degree of grammaticality, semantically they are related to a need to describe a situation of imminent change or a situation set against the background of the other situation.

This comprehensive study investigates the crucial role of clauses in English sentence structure, primarily focusing on the distinction between independent clauses and dependent clauses. This research explores how these two types of clauses function as essential components in forming sentence structures, facilitating the expression of complex ideas and effective communication. The investigation reveals that independent clauses possess the ability to position alone as thorough sentences, while dependent clauses depend on independent clauses on the context and meaning. The study identifies various types of dependent clauses and examines how they contribute to more complex sentence structures. Furthermore, this research highlights the importance of subordinating conjunctions in introducing dependent clauses and establishing logical relationships within sentence structures. By elucidating the functions of independent and dependent clauses, this study provides valuable insights into the formation of effective sentence structures. The research demonstrates how the strategic use of independent and dependent clauses, along with the appropriate utilization of subordinating conjunctions, can enhance the quality and complexity of sentence structures. This analysis offers a deeper understanding of sentence structure mechanisms, contributing to broader linguistic theories and applications. The study emphasizes the critical role of clause analysis in developing strong writing skills and effective communication. The results indicate that a solid understanding of independent clauses, dependent clauses, and the use of subordinating conjunctions is crucial in creating varied and expressive sentence structures. This study contributes significantly to the considerate of sentence structures in English, underscoring the importance of independent clauses, dependent clauses, and subordinating conjunctions in language learning, teaching, and research. The study concludes that mastery of various clause types and the ability to combine them effectively are key to enhancing language proficiency and communication skills.

This paper discusses the result of analyzing the ability of undergraduate students to the difficulty of identifying simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. A descriptive quantitative approach and a descriptive qualitative approach were used in this study. Descriptive quantitative was used to see the student score test in analyzing simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. Descriptive qualitative was used to see the result of students’ interviews on their difficulty identifying simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences. This study shows that students' ability mean score was 11.84 from 20 points, the median was 12 from 20 points, and the range was 6 (as a lower score) and 17 (the highest score) from 20 points. Most of the students still have difficulty identifying the formation of simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. Mainly because they still don’t understand connectors in the four types of sentences, such as subordinate connectors. Therefore students are required to practice writing in order to make it easier to form a simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences.

The author investigated the interpretation of temporal references during comprehension of sentences containing a main and subordinate clause. Experiments 1 and 2 examined state and event subordinate clauses, respectively, and showed that subordinate temporal references overlapping with or close to the time of the main clause event were read faster than nonoverlapping distant references. Experiment 3 examined temporal references in nonsubordinate main clauses and confirmed that temporal relations between main and subordinate clauses were established on-line in the previous experiments. Experiment 4 independently manipulated temporal overlap and distance and suggested that event and state clauses are processed according to distinct temporal parameters. The results are explained by the contingency relations that events and states establish with other discourse events.

While considerable research has been conducted on the register analysis of English language tertiary textbooks, relatively little is explored about the register analytical features of secondary textbooks. The purpose of the present pedagogically-driven study is to analyse the register of biology textbooks for secondary students from the point of view of English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching by describing the register of the biology corpus (BIOCOR) that 10th grade students need to process during their studies at a bilingual secondary school. The research reports on the characteristic linguistic features of the BIOCOR with regard to the complexity of the texts syntactic structure. The BIOCOR (consisting of 7,021 words) is compared to a reference corpus (REFCOR) of general English texts at a CEFR B2 level (comprising 7,098 words) by exploring the frequency of ten types of syntactic structures (simple, compound and complex sentences of various number of dependent and independent clauses). The results of the investigation disclose that syntactic simplicity is prevalent in the BIOCOR: simple sentences abound, complex sentences are used in a modest manner, while complex-compound sentences are hardly present in the corpus. The syntactic simplicity of the biology textbook can be regarded as one of the linguistic features revealing the non-academic but popularizing nature of the secondary textbook register.

This study aimed to describe tertiary students’ difficulties in combining English clauses to generate complex sentences. A descriptive quantitative method was applied by involving 30 tertiary English students at IAIN Curup as the samples. They were selected using a quota sampling technique. The present study revealed that many students (62.82%) had difficulties in combining between adjective clauses and independent clauses to generate English complex sentences. They also found it difficult to use subordinate connectors “who, whose, whom, and which” properly. Some students (42.64%) had difficulties in combining between adverbial clauses and independent clauses to generate English complex sentences. They found it difficult to use some subordinate connectors such as “after, if, before, nevertheless, nonetheless, and however” appropriately. Subsequently, many students (69.31%) had difficulties in combining between noun clauses and independent clauses to generate English complex sentences. They found it difficult to use subordinate connectors such as “what, where, why, whose, when, and how” properly. Further studies are expected to conduct experimentations and classroom-action research to help improve students’ English grammatical competence.Key words:Independent clause, dependent clause, complex sentence

The focus here is on the semantics of a complex sentence that expresses a causality relation. To deal with semantics of a complex sentence we first address the coreference relations holding among several roles appearing in a main clause or a subordinate clause. In order to make clear the real problem for dealing with coreference relations, we need to know the syntactic and semantic status of a complex sentence. The status of a complex sentence is somewhere between discourse and a simple sentence. Then we think of anaphora resolution of complex sentence because coreference analysis is a part of it. As for anaphora resolution, on the one hand, GB theory gives us a sophisticated framework for a simple sentence with to-phrase (Sells 1985). In a complex sentence, however, pronouns or Japanese zero pronouns are sometimes pro, which means that we have to find their antecedents not syntactically but pragmatically or contextually. On the other hand, many researchers have investigated this problem from the viewpoint of discourse structure. For instance, Hobbs (1979) suggested that there are systematic relations between coreference and discourse structure. Recently, centering theories (Brennan, Friedman & Pollard 1987; Walker et al. 1994; Kameyama 1988) have shown the algorithms to infer coreference relations among consecutive sentences in discourse. In Japanese, however, if we apply these centering algorithms to a subordinate clause and its main clause, sometimes they make wrong predictions of coreference relation (Nakagawa & Nishizawa 1994). Then we need a more sophisticated approach to improve the quality of predicting coreference relations.KeywordsOutermost LayerSemantic RoleMain ClauseComplex SentenceModality PartThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The aim of the study is to describe evaluation in the metacommunicative aspect within German scientific and journalistic discourse. The article analyzes complex sentences with causal subordinate clauses, which serve as means of argumentation and justification in expressing cause-and-effect relationships, where various types of evaluation (positive and negative, subjective and objective, rational and emotional) are explicitly conveyed. In complex sentences with causal subordinate clauses, evaluation functions as a secondary layer of meaning alongside the primary meaning and the syntactic relations arising between the main and subordinate clauses, allowing evaluation to be considered as a metacommunicative tool in the realization of scientific and journalistic discourse. The scientific novelty of the research lies in demonstrating the interrelation between the categories of subordination and evaluation, whereby the established type of cause correlates with a specific kind of evaluation. The results showed that the metacommunicativity of evaluation is marked by the position of the subordinate clause relative to the main clause, the semantics of conjunctions, lexical content, and context. The study identifies linguistic means of rational and emotional evaluation and proposes a classification of evaluations based on the types of causal subordinate clauses distinguished.

Conceived within the frame of the ItalAnt project for the realization of a grammar of Old Italian (intended as corresponding to the variety used in Florence in the 13 t h century), this paper deals with the semantic area of concessive constructions. The basic morphosyntactic structures of contemporary Italian - consisting in hypotaxis with subordinating conjunctions (plus sometimes added adverbials), and in parataxis with coordinating conjunctions and/or adverbial elements - correspond to those documented in Old Italian, with the exception of «parahypotaxis». The label is traditionally adopted to name sequences of «dependent clause + main clause» where the last is introduced by a coordinating conjunction like e («and») or ma («but»); in this way a correlative structure is formed, parallel to the one which may be found in more common sequences of «dependent clause + main clause» where the last contains an adverbial not coordinating element. Between the two diachronic strata of Italian there are instead deeper differences with respect to the morpholexical elements adopted to express the semantic relationship, especially in hypotaxis: the basic form is avvegna che (unknown in contemporary Italian), while tutto che, ancor che and the nowadays main written subordinating conjunction benche appear only rarely, and the other «modern» forms sebbene, quantunque, etc. are not attested. Stronger although not perfect correspondences may be found in paratactic structures, where the second coordinate clause is introduced by the coordinating conjunctions e and ma and/or contains the anaphoric adverbials non ostante questo, con tutto cio, tuttavia and pur.

This corpus-based study examines the functions of the conditional converb in Forest Enets and investigates the differences in its use between two generations of Enets speakers. In line with the previous descriptions, independent clauses with conditional converbs are used as self-addressed questions (yes/no, special, and alternative questions). The conditional converb of the verb ɛ ‘be’ when used with numerals is developing into a marker of approximation. Dependent clauses with conditional converbs include protases of conditional and concessive conditional constructions as well as complement clauses. This study discusses the diachronic relation between independent clauses with conditional converbs and the protasis of conditional constructions and concludes that either of the two directions of development is possible. Complement clauses with conditional converbs include, first, irrealis complements to negative propositional attitude predicates (dʲɔxara ‘not know’, dʲurta ‘forget’), which, showing signs of relatively recent grammaticalization, have hitherto received scant attention by scholars, and, second, sentential subjects in modal constructions with such predicates as sɔjza ‘good’, bɔɔ ‘bad’ etc. To compare the use of the Enets conditional converb across types of clauses and generations of speakers, this paper analyses the occurrence of the future tense marker on the converb, the order of clauses in multi-clause constructions, the range of verbs in the main and in the dependent clauses. Many of these parameters can be interpreted as the signs of the growing level of clause integration in the process of grammaticalization of polypredicative constructions.

P-words encompass prepositions, particles, and prefixes. The cases associated with each preposition (P) are determined partly lexically and partly syntactically. Because of the dative-instrumental-ablative-locative syncretism, most Ps in Gothic are accompanied by the dative. Prefixation is the primary means of altering the meaning or (lexical) aspect of Gothic verbs and deriving new verbs. Most verbs can take prefixes of some sort. Strings of preverbs in the unmarked case are ordered source > goal > place. In main clauses, verbs allow particle stranding of the outermost of two particles, but in subordinate clauses and infinitives, all verbal particles must undergo adjunction. Preposition incorporation is frequent but productive only with miþ (with). Potential instances of preverb gapping are not unequivocal.

German free relative constructions allow for case requirement mismatches under two types of circumstances. The first is when the case required in the embedded clause is more complex (NOM < ACC < GEN < DAT) than the case required in the main clause, and the relative pronoun takes the form of the embedded clause case. The second type of circumstance is when the form that corresponds to the two required cases is syncretic. I propose an analysis that combines Caha’s (2009) case hierarchy in Nanosyntax with Van Riemsdijk’s (2006a) concept of Grafting. By placing case features as separate heads in the syntax, a less complex case can be Grafted into a different clause, explaining the first type of circumstance. The second type makes reference to the fact that syncretic forms are inserted via the same lexical entry (Superset Principle). A cross-linguistic comparison shows that it is language-specific whether a more complex case requirement in the main or embedded clause causes non-matching non-syncretic free relatives to be grammatical. For all languages it holds that the relative pronoun appears in the most complex case required, which provides additional evidence for case being complex and more complex cases being able to license less complex cases.