CHAPTER 1. The notion of complex sentence and its typology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction …………………………………………………………..... 3

CHAPTER 1. The notion of complex sentence and its typology................................................................................................................ 6

1.1. Complex sentence as a polypredicative grammatical construction........ 6

1.1.1. The main sentence types in English................................................ 8

1.1.2. The syntactic status of principal and subordinate clauses as the predicative units of complex sentences......................................... 12

1.1.3. Syndetic and asyndetic means of combining clauses.................... 15

1.2. Classification of complex sentences according to the type of subordinate clauses............................................................................... 17

1.2.1. Clauses of primary nominal position............................................ 19

1.2.2. Clauses of secondary nominal position......................................... 23

1.2.3. Clauses of adverbial position........................................................ 26

Conclusion..........................................................................................................30

CHAPTER 2. Syntactic characteristics of complex sentences in the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O.Henry................................................................................................................... 31

2.1. Stylistic features of O. Henry's short stories.............................................. 31

2.1.1. General review of the writer's artistic legacy................................ 32

2.1.2. The main characteristics of O. Henry's writing style.................... 35

2.1.3. Sentence structure peculiarities typical of O. Henry's short stories…….................................................................................... 38

2.2. The syntactic analysis of complex sentences in the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry...................................................................................... 40

2.2.1. The use of different sentence types in the story............................ 41

2.2.2. Complex sentence types represented in the literary work............. 43

2.2.3. The use of literary devices employed in the story in regard to the structure of complex sentences..................................................... 47

Conclusion …………………………………………………………........ 50

GENERAL CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE COURSE PAPER....51

BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………......…………………………….... 52

INTRODUCTION

Linguistic research results of XX-XXI centuries suggest that after analysing an extensive bulk of the factual language material, the majority of linguists have provided their own ways to look at topical grammatical phenomena as well as substantiated some of their classifications. The study of complex sentences is intrinsically pertinent to those issues as it focuses on a polyfunctional language unit that integrates a whole spectrum of syntactical, semantical, and communicative features. Based on these assumptions we've chosen the topic of our course paper which sounds as follows: “Complex sentences in modern English”.

Theoretical foundation of the paper was formed by such scholars as Celce-Murcia М., Larsen-Freeman D., Chalker S., Collins, Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. A, F. Bowers, and Blokh M.Y. Some other linguists who studied complex sentences were Dwight Bolinger, David Brazil, David Crystal, George Oliver Curme, Renaat Declerck, Alfred C. Gimson, Michael Alexander, Kirkwood Halliday, Jacobs R. A.

The topicality of this paper deals with the necessity of finding new approaches to the analysis of complex sentences used in literary works due to their large variety and due to the ways of author's creative usage of them.

The objective of the work is describing and specifying different types of complex sentences, their characteristics and the way they function in modern English.

To achieve this aim we should fulfil the following tasks:

1) to give a survey of the most important aspects of the complex sentence as polypredicative structure;

2) to analyze and systematize different types of complex sentences;

3) to research the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O' Henryin regard to the syntactic characteristics of complex sentences;

4) to identify main features typical of O' Henry's complex sentences which pertain to his style of writing.

The object under study is the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O.Henry, and the subject of the present thesis can be defined as the syntactic peculiarities of complex sentences in this literary work.

In the course paper the following methods were employed: the method of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, the literary method, the descriptive, comparative, and structural approaches.

The research is by and large theoretical, analytical and descriptive in its nature. The procedure of data analysis is based on close reading and text analysis.

The significance of the study. This research would be of great practical importance to those who have interest in syntax of modern English, especially complex sentence structures. The paper may provide a valuable insight into the ways of analysing different sentence structures in terms of the kind and the number of clauses involved and the way they are connected.

The scientific novelty of the paper deals with the systematization of different syntactical phenomena pertaining to complex sentences. Also, very little research has been done so far regarding complex sentence structure analysis of O' Henry's literary works. Therefore, this thesis is intended to address those concerns and fill the gaps mentioned above.

To start the paper a considerable attention has been given to the way of defying the notion of complex sentence and its place among other syntactic structures of modern English. A comprehensive typology of complex sentences was given in the second paragraph.

This classification will subsequently be used as a basis of the analysis of sample examples from O' Henry's stories in Chapter 2. A thorough consideration will be given to the peculiarities of subordinate clauses and the means of their connection.

From the structural point of view, the paper falls into two chapters:

1. The notion of complex sentence and its typology

2. Syntactic characteristics of complex sentences in the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O.Henry.

The first chapter provides an extensive overview of the main theoretical aspects relating to the syntactic features of the complex sentences. In the first part it outlines the main classifications of sentences in modern English based on number of criteria, the communicative and the structural being the most important.

After thoroughly considering the types of sentences existent in English today, we narrow our focus down to the complex sentence only. In this respect, we analyse the status of principal and dependent clauses and explain the syntactical phenomenon of subordination.

Finally, we make an account of the connective means that join the clauses together, namely, conjunctional and non-conjunctional ones and classify them.

The entire second paragraph of the first chapter is dedicated to classifying subordinate clauses. It takes perspective on each of the five basic types of dependent clauses: subject, predicate, object, attributive and adverbial. Within these main groups there are also distinguished several subgroups.

In the second chapter we sustain all the theoretical statements posed in the first chapter and exemplify them using textual material from the short story “The Gift of the Magi” written by O' Henry.

The chapter starts off with the description of the writer's legacy with some scarce biographical facts included. Then there follows the analysis of O' Henry's writing style with a particular attention given to the structural characteristics of the sentences and the stylistic implications that they induce.

In the last part of the second chapter there is statistical data analysis presented in the form of pie-charts. We calculate the percentage of different sentence types and analyze how it effects the narration stylistically. And again, all the necessary examples to sustain our findings are fully provided.

The course paper consists of the introduction, two chapters, conclusions and the bibliography. The total number of pages is 55; the list of literature embraces 51 source.

 

Expressiveness

According to the category of expressiveness, the sentences fall into two main groups: emphatic and non-emphatic. 'Non-emphatic' expressiveness has a zero form, whereas 'emphasis' is expressed by a strong accent on a word-morpheme.

There exist some other classifications. For example, according to the category of information, the sentences are divided into affirmations and negations.

Ch. Fries gives an original classification sentence types. All the sentences are divided by him into communicative and non-communicative [29].

Some scientists distinguish quasi-sentences, that fall into three types: vocative, interjectional, and meta-communicative [4].

Different perspectives on sentence classification were developed by the following linguists: B.A.Illish, B.S. Khaimovich, B.I.Rogovskaya, M.Y. Bloch, Ch.Fries and others.

I. Pure conjunctions

Conjunction is a part of speech that joins words, phrases, and clauses. The word conjunction comes from the Latin word "conjunctus", which means "joined with".There are 4 different kinds of conjunctions, namely: coordinating, subordinating, correlative and conjunction adverbs.

1. Coordinative conjunctions (coordinators) are conjunctions that join two or more items of equal syntactic importance (for example, the clauses of compound sentences): for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.

2. Subordinating conjunctions (subordinators / dependent words) conjoin an independent clause and a dependent clause of complex sentences. They come at the beginning of the subordinate clause. According to the character of relationship between the dependent clause and the rest of the sentence that they establish there distinguish 4 main groups of subordinating conjunctions:

— cause / effect: rather than, even if, so that, unless, in order that, if, though, whereas, because, only if, that;

— comparison: whether, as, as if, even though, as long as, as though, if only, than, although;

— time (temporal): now that, after, whenever, until, once, since, till, while, when, before, while;

— location: where, wherever.

3. Correlative conjunctions work in pairs to join words and groups of words of equal weight in a sentence: both... and, either... or, neither... nor, whether... or, not only … but also. They may be used as clause introducers in compound sentences (except for both... and).

4. Conjunctive adverbs (transition words) show the relationship between different clauses of a compound sentence. They provide greater cohesion by making it more explicit how ideas relate to each other. They are used to connect two clauses and they show cause and effect, sequence, contrast, comparison, or other relations: also, indeed, now, anyway, instead, otherwise, besides, likewise, similarly, certainly, meanwile, still, finally, moreover, then, furthermore, namely, therefore, however, nevertheless, thus, incidentally, next, undoubtedly.

Historically speaking, conjunctions developed from adverbs, and one word or another may prove to be in an intermediate stage, when there are no sufficient objective criteria to define its status.

II. Conjunctive substitutes

Pronominal connective words (relative pronouns) occupy a notional position in the derived sentence; for example, some of them replace a certain antecedent (i.e. a word or phrase to which the connector refers back) in the principal clause [17], e.g.:The man whom I saw last night surprised me.

Rhetoric questions

A rhetoric question is a syntactical stylistic device based on the stylistic use of structural meaning. Although it is put in interrogative form, a rhetoric question poses no question per se; it is only used for the sake of dramatical effect rather than to elicit an actual answer (because it is obvious), for example: Eight dollars a week or a million a year - what is the difference?

Parallel constructions

As a stylistic device, parallelism represents two or more syntactic structures that have the same syntactic pattern [23]. The examples from the short story are:

1) In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. This isa complex sentence that includes two attributive clauses with parallel subordination.

2) Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out of the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy. These are two complex sentences with adverbial clauses of condition that follow the same syntactical and logical pattern.

Parceling is intentional splitting of sentences into smaller parts separated by full stops [23].

There have been found three cases of parceling in the text:

1) But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

2) She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends - a mammoth task.

3) So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

In the examples given above the second sentences are, in fact, continuative clauses that refer to the first sentences as a whole.

Conclusion

In the chapter 2 there were outlined syntactic characteristics of complex sentences presented in O' Henry's style of writing. We've chosen “The Gift of the Magi” as a short story for our in-depth analysis.

The first paragraph characterized O' Henry's writing style in general.

In the subsection 2.1.1 we've briefly touched upon the main biographical facts

that may provide us with certain insight as to how the social environment shaped O'Henry's writing. The list of most prominent O' Henry's literary works is also included along with the topics he addressed.

In the subparagraph 2.1.2 there were represented the main features of O'Henry's writing style. We've outlined and exemplified six aspects typical of O'Henry's writing, namely: 1) a “surprise ending”; 2) attention to details combined with minimalism; 3) use of humor; 4) allusions; 5) slang; 6) puns & wordplay. Finally, we've defined a pattern which almost any of the writer's short stories seems to follow.

Subsection 2.1.3. is dedicated to the sentence structure peculiarities observed in O' Henry's short stories. It's been determined that many of the sentences don't have a very complicated structure which is explained by verbal economy of words due to the very nature of the genre. Different types of clauses and other syntactic features used in O' Henry's writing were also under consideration.

The second paragraph of the chapter focuses mainly on the syntactic analysis of the complex sentences represented in the short story "The Gift of the Magi" from the point of view of their type, structure, connective devices and semantical relations employed, as well as stylistic their value.

Subparagraph 2.2.1 makes a review of all of the sentence types that occur within the story. Subsection 2.2.2. is dedicated only to the analysis of complex sentences in the literary work. These two subparagraphs contain statistical data, which is represented in the form of pie charts. Our findings concerning the stylistic value of the complex sentences in connection to their structure are described in the last sebsection (2.2.3).

 

 

GENERAL CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE COURSE PAPER

 

Complex sentences constitute a huge part of our daily communication. Moreover, they can present such types of relations between clauses that simple or compound sentences simply cannot convey. The semantical relations of subordination are far more diverse than that of coordination.

Although a complex sentence is a polypredicative stucture that is organized on the basis of subordination with one clause playing the dominating role, the semantycal relations between the two clauses are far too complicated and depend on many factors.

These semantical features of complex sentences, which manifest themselves structurally, also create conditions for employing differet stylistic devices.

The present paper doesn't claim to be exhaustive concerning the ways the complex sentences function in modern English. However, we have taken a fresh perspective on different explanations of this grammatical phenomenon, its typology and the peculairities of its stylistic function in the narration. To sustain our theoretical assumptions we have carried out linguistical analysis of the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O' Henry.

All these assumptions take us to one of the most important conclusions that can be drawn from this paper. It is that complex sentences are structurally, semantically and logically, one of the most flexible sentence types that is capable of conveying almost any kind of relation existent in language or human mind, which proves its highly polyfunctional nature.

Upon conducting the present research we fulfiled the following aims:

1) to give a survey of the most important aspects of the complex sentence as polypredicative structure;

2) to analyze and systematize different types of complex sentences;

3) to research the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O' Henryin regard to the syntactic characteristics of complex sentences;

4) To identify main features typical of O' Henry's complex sentences which pertain to his style of writing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

1. Воронцова Г. Н. Очерки по грамматике английского языка. М., 1960.

2. Есперсен О. Философия грамматики. - М., 1958.

3. Иванова И. П., Бурлаклва В. В., Почепцов Г. Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. - М., 1981

4. Потапенко С. І., Харитонов І. К. Сучасний англійський синтаксис. - Ніжин, 2005.

5. Почепцов Г. Г. Конструктивный анализ структуры предложения. - К., 1971.

6. Раевская Н. Н. Очерки по стилистической грамматике современного английского языка. - К., 1973.

7. Смирницкий А. И. Синтаксис английского языка. - М., 1957.

8. Харитонов І. К. Теоретична граматика сучасної англійської мови. - Ніжин, 1992, с. 64-65.

9. Шишкина Т. Н. Предисловие // О. Henry. Selected Stories. -М: Progress Publishers, 1977.-С. 3-26.

10. Aklile Alemu. Stylistic Analysis of Selected Short Stories By O. Henry: Master's Thesis / Addis Ababa University. - 2015.

11. Assefa Zeru. Style and Historical Meaning of Three Amharic Historical Novels: MA thesis. - Addis Ababa, 1996.

12. Blokh M.Y. A Course in English Theoretical Grammar. - M.: 1983, pp.303-311.

13. Bloom H. O.Henry: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide. Philadelphia, Penn: Chelsea House, 1999. - 63 p.

14. Brooks V. W. New York: O. Henry // The Confident Years: 1885-1915. -N. Y.: E. P. Dutton & Co, 1952.

15. Celce-Murcia М., Larsen-Freeman D. The Grammar Book. Boston, 1983. - 583 p. 156.

16. Cerf В., Cartmell V. Introduction // Best Stories of O. Henry. Garden City, N. Y.: The Sun Dial Press, 1945. - P. Vii-x.

17. Chalker S. English Guides 9: Linking Words. Harper Collins Publishers, 1996. - 214 p.

18. Clarkson P. S. A Bibliography of William Sydney Porter (О. Henry). Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1938.-161 p.

19. Collins COBUILD English Grammar. London and Glasgow, 1990. 485 p.

20. Current-Garcia E. О. Henry: A Study of the Short Fiction. - N. Y.: Twayne, 1993.

21. Current-Garcia E. O. Henry: A Study of the Short Fiction. N. Y.: Twayne, 1993. - xv, 189 p.

22. Davis R. H., Maurice A. B. The Caliph of Bagdad: Being Arabian Nights Flashes of the Life, Letters, and Work of O. Henry. N.Y.: D. Appleton and Company, 1931. -xi, 411 p.

23. Dupriez B. M., Halsall A. W. A Dictionary of Literary Devices: Gradus, A-Z, Virginia.: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.

24. Evans W. "A Municipal Report": O. Henry and Postmodernism // Tennessee Studies in Literature. Vol. XXVI. - 1981. - P. 101 -116.

25. Forman H. J. O. Henry's Short Stories // O. Henry. Waifs and Strays: Twelve Stories by O. Henry. Together with a Representative Selection of Critical and Biographical Comment. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1925. - P. 275-278.

26. Forrest Lunn, Complex Sentences. An Analytical Grammar for Advanced ESL Students, - Florida.: 1995.

27. Fusco R. Maupassant and O. Henry // Maupassant and the American Short Story: The Influence of Form at the Turn of the Century. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.-P. 118-137.

28. Gates W. В. O. Henry and Shakespeare // Shakespeare Association Bulletin. Vol. XDi. - 1944. - January. - P. 20-25.

29. Iofic L. L., Chakhoyan L. P., Pospelova A. G. Readings in the Theory of English Grsmmar. - L., 1981.

30. Kramer D. The Heart of O. Henry. N. Y.: Rinehart, 1954. - 323 p.

31. Leech, G. and Short, M.H.Style in Fiction, London: Pearson Education Limited, 2007.

32. LongE. H. O. Herny. The Man and His Work. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949. - xi, 158 p.

33. LongE. H. O.Henry as a Regional Artist // Essays on American Literature. -Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1967. P. 229-240.

34. Luedtke, Luther S., and Keith Lawrence, "William Sydney Porter," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 78: American Short-Story Writers, 1880-1910, edited by Bobby Ellen Kimbel, Gale Research, 1989, pp. 288-307.

35. Marcus S. The Legacy of O. Henry: His Contribution to Popular Culture // Commentaiy. - 1954. - № 1 (Jan.) - P. 72-74.

36. MonteneiroG. Hemingway, O.Henry, and the Surprise Ending // Prairie Schooner. -Vol. XLVII. 1973-1974. -№ 4 (Winter). - P. 296-302.

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38. O'Connor R. O. Henry. The Legendary Life of William S. Porter. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1970. - x, 252 p.

39. O'Quinn Т. E., Porter J. L. Time to Write: How William Sidney Porter Became O. Henry. - Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1986.-х, 207 p.

40. Pattee F. L. O. Henry and the Handbooks // The Development of the American Short Story: An Historical Survey. N. Y.: Harper and Row, 1923. - P. 357-376.

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42. Poupard D. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 19, 1986.

43. Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. A Grammar of Contemporary English. London, 1972. - 778 p.

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45. Smith А. С. O. Herny. Biography. N. Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1916. - ix, 258 p.

46. StuartD. O.Henry: A Biography of William Sydney Porter. Chelsea, Michigan: Scarborough House, 1990. - 267 p.

47. The Complete Works of О. Henry. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1953. -xvi, 1692 p.

48. VanDorenC. O.Henry // The Texas Review. Vol.11. - 1917. — №3 (January).1. P. 248-259.

49. Williams В. C. William Sidney Porter ("O. Henry") // Our Short Story Writers. - N. Y.: Dodd, Mead and Co, 1929. P. 200-222.

50. Woodward V. S. О. Henry's Use of the Malapropos and Related Devices: Master's Thesis / Stetson University. - DeLand, 1935.

51. Wren P.C., Martin H. High School English Grammar and Composition. S. Chand & Company Limited, 1995.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction …………………………………………………………..... 3

CHAPTER 1. The notion of complex sentence and its typology................................................................................................................ 6

1.1. Complex sentence as a polypredicative grammatical construction........ 6

1.1.1. The main sentence types in English................................................ 8

1.1.2. The syntactic status of principal and subordinate clauses as the predicative units of complex sentences......................................... 12

1.1.3. Syndetic and asyndetic means of combining clauses.................... 15

1.2. Classification of complex sentences according to the type of subordinate clauses............................................................................... 17

1.2.1. Clauses of primary nominal position............................................ 19

1.2.2. Clauses of secondary nominal position......................................... 23

1.2.3. Clauses of adverbial position........................................................ 26

Conclusion..........................................................................................................30

CHAPTER 2. Syntactic characteristics of complex sentences in the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O.Henry................................................................................................................... 31

2.1. Stylistic features of O. Henry's short stories.............................................. 31

2.1.1. General review of the writer's artistic legacy................................ 32

2.1.2. The main characteristics of O. Henry's writing style.................... 35

2.1.3. Sentence structure peculiarities typical of O. Henry's short stories…….................................................................................... 38

2.2. The syntactic analysis of complex sentences in the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry...................................................................................... 40

2.2.1. The use of different sentence types in the story............................ 41

2.2.2. Complex sentence types represented in the literary work............. 43

2.2.3. The use of literary devices employed in the story in regard to the structure of complex sentences..................................................... 47

Conclusion …………………………………………………………........ 50

GENERAL CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE COURSE PAPER....51

BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………......…………………………….... 52

INTRODUCTION

Linguistic research results of XX-XXI centuries suggest that after analysing an extensive bulk of the factual language material, the majority of linguists have provided their own ways to look at topical grammatical phenomena as well as substantiated some of their classifications. The study of complex sentences is intrinsically pertinent to those issues as it focuses on a polyfunctional language unit that integrates a whole spectrum of syntactical, semantical, and communicative features. Based on these assumptions we've chosen the topic of our course paper which sounds as follows: “Complex sentences in modern English”.

Theoretical foundation of the paper was formed by such scholars as Celce-Murcia М., Larsen-Freeman D., Chalker S., Collins, Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. A, F. Bowers, and Blokh M.Y. Some other linguists who studied complex sentences were Dwight Bolinger, David Brazil, David Crystal, George Oliver Curme, Renaat Declerck, Alfred C. Gimson, Michael Alexander, Kirkwood Halliday, Jacobs R. A.

The topicality of this paper deals with the necessity of finding new approaches to the analysis of complex sentences used in literary works due to their large variety and due to the ways of author's creative usage of them.

The objective of the work is describing and specifying different types of complex sentences, their characteristics and the way they function in modern English.

To achieve this aim we should fulfil the following tasks:

1) to give a survey of the most important aspects of the complex sentence as polypredicative structure;

2) to analyze and systematize different types of complex sentences;

3) to research the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O' Henryin regard to the syntactic characteristics of complex sentences;

4) to identify main features typical of O' Henry's complex sentences which pertain to his style of writing.

The object under study is the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O.Henry, and the subject of the present thesis can be defined as the syntactic peculiarities of complex sentences in this literary work.

In the course paper the following methods were employed: the method of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, the literary method, the descriptive, comparative, and structural approaches.

The research is by and large theoretical, analytical and descriptive in its nature. The procedure of data analysis is based on close reading and text analysis.

The significance of the study. This research would be of great practical importance to those who have interest in syntax of modern English, especially complex sentence structures. The paper may provide a valuable insight into the ways of analysing different sentence structures in terms of the kind and the number of clauses involved and the way they are connected.

The scientific novelty of the paper deals with the systematization of different syntactical phenomena pertaining to complex sentences. Also, very little research has been done so far regarding complex sentence structure analysis of O' Henry's literary works. Therefore, this thesis is intended to address those concerns and fill the gaps mentioned above.

To start the paper a considerable attention has been given to the way of defying the notion of complex sentence and its place among other syntactic structures of modern English. A comprehensive typology of complex sentences was given in the second paragraph.

This classification will subsequently be used as a basis of the analysis of sample examples from O' Henry's stories in Chapter 2. A thorough consideration will be given to the peculiarities of subordinate clauses and the means of their connection.

From the structural point of view, the paper falls into two chapters:

1. The notion of complex sentence and its typology

2. Syntactic characteristics of complex sentences in the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O.Henry.

The first chapter provides an extensive overview of the main theoretical aspects relating to the syntactic features of the complex sentences. In the first part it outlines the main classifications of sentences in modern English based on number of criteria, the communicative and the structural being the most important.

After thoroughly considering the types of sentences existent in English today, we narrow our focus down to the complex sentence only. In this respect, we analyse the status of principal and dependent clauses and explain the syntactical phenomenon of subordination.

Finally, we make an account of the connective means that join the clauses together, namely, conjunctional and non-conjunctional ones and classify them.

The entire second paragraph of the first chapter is dedicated to classifying subordinate clauses. It takes perspective on each of the five basic types of dependent clauses: subject, predicate, object, attributive and adverbial. Within these main groups there are also distinguished several subgroups.

In the second chapter we sustain all the theoretical statements posed in the first chapter and exemplify them using textual material from the short story “The Gift of the Magi” written by O' Henry.

The chapter starts off with the description of the writer's legacy with some scarce biographical facts included. Then there follows the analysis of O' Henry's writing style with a particular attention given to the structural characteristics of the sentences and the stylistic implications that they induce.

In the last part of the second chapter there is statistical data analysis presented in the form of pie-charts. We calculate the percentage of different sentence types and analyze how it effects the narration stylistically. And again, all the necessary examples to sustain our findings are fully provided.

The course paper consists of the introduction, two chapters, conclusions and the bibliography. The total number of pages is 55; the list of literature embraces 51 source.

 

CHAPTER 1. The notion of complex sentence and its typology