Chapter 1. Compound sentences and their structural and functional characteristics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER 1. Compound SENTENCES AND THEIR STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS..........................................................6

1.1. Compound sentence as a type of a composite sentence..................................................................................................6

1.1.1. Classification of Sentences in English............................................7

1.1.2. Compound and Semi-compound Sentences..................................11

1.1.3. Conjunctive and Non-conjunctive Coordination...........................14

1.2. The Means of Expressing Logico-semantic Relations between Coordinate Clauses...............................................................................17

1.2.1. Types of Coordination in a Compound Sentence..........................19

1.2.2. Semantical Correlation with the Subordinative Connections.......23

1.2.3. Punctuating Compound Sentences................................................25

Conclusion..........................................................................................................29

CHAPTER 2. SYNTACTIC AND STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND SENTENCES AND THEIR FUNCTION IN "THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE" BY OSCAR WILDE.....................................30

2.1. The many facets of Oscar Wilde's literary legacy......................................30

2.1.1. B iographical portrayal of Oscar Wilde..........................................32

2.1.2. General review of O. Wilde's oeuvre.............................................36

2.1.3. Literary analysis of the short story “The Nightingale and the Rose”.............................................................................................39

2.2. The syntactic analysis of compound sentences in the short story “The Nightingale and the Rose” by O. Wilde............................................................42

2.2.1. The use of different sentence types in the story.............................43

2.2.2. Compound sentence types represented in the literary work..........45

2.2.3. The use of literary devices employed in the story in regard to the structure of compound sentences.................................................49

Conclusion …………………………………………………………........52

GENERAL CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE COURSE PAPER.....53

BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………......…………………….......…….54

Introduction

 

Grammatical features of different sentence types have always captured linguist's attention who have build up a large body of scientific works regarding topical grammatical phenomena in XX-XXI centuries. The study of compound sentences is intrinsically pertinent to those issues as it focuses on a polyfunctional language unit which embraces a whole spectrum of syntactical, logical, semantical, and communicative characteristics. Therefore we've chosen the topic of our thesis to be “Compound sentences in modern English”.

Theoretical foundation of the paper was formed by such scholars as E.Harman, K. Polanski, S. Dick, N. Kobrina, A. Korneyeva, M.Y.Blokh, Ch. Collins, H. Stokoe, B. A. Illish, B. S. Khaimovich, B. I. Rogovskaya, Ch. Fries and others.

The topicality of this paper deals with the necessity of finding new approaches to the analysis of compound sentences used in literary works due to the variety of their logico-semantical, structural and communicative types and due to the creative ways in which the authors tend to use them.

The objective of this paper is to describe and specify different types of compound sentences, their characteristics and the way they function in modern English. The following tasks are needed to be carried out in order to fulfil this objective:

1) to provide a general account of the main sentence types in English in order to promote the basic understanding of the place that compound sentences occupy in this classification;

2) to define syntactical nature of the compound sentence and its structural constituents;

3) to analyse and systematize different types of compound sentences;

4) to find the correlation between compound and complex sentences;

5) to research the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O. Wildein regard to the syntactic characteristics of compound sentences;

6) to identify the role of compound sentences in the story as it pertains to the use of different stylistic devices.

The object under study is the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O.Wilde, and the subject of the present course paper is the syntactic peculiarities of compound sentences in this literary work.

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

The research is of theoretical, analytical and descriptive character. The procedure of data analysis is based on close reading and text analysis.

The significance of the study. This research would constitute practical importance to those who are interested in English grammar, in particular, compound and semi-compound sentences. The paper may provide a valuable insight into the ways of analysing different compound sentence structures in terms of the ways in which they are connected.

The scientific novelty of the paper deals with the systematization of different syntactical phenomena pertaining to compound sentences. Also, very little research has been done so far regarding compound sentence structure analysis of O. Wilde'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 compound sentence and its place among other syntactic structures of modern English. A comprehensive typology of compound sentences was given in the second paragraph.

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

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

Chapter 1. Compound sentences and their structural and functional characteristics;

Chapter 2. Syntactic and stylistic analysis of the compound sentences and their function in "The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde.

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

After thoroughly considering the types of sentences existent in English today, we narrow our focus down to the compound sentences only. In the second paragraph of Chapter 1 we analyse various relations between different coordinate clauses and the peculiarities of their formal markers, namely, coordinate conjunctions and connective words of adverbial nature.

The last subparagraph of the theoretical part of the work is dedicated to the problem of punctuating compound sentences. First, we have reviewed the most general rules of punctuating the coordinate clauses, and then extended on its peculiarities as it pertains to four basic logico-semantical types of relations realized in the compound sentences.

In the second chapter we sustain all the theoretical statements and exemplify them using textual material from the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O. Wilde.

The chapter starts off with the description of the writer's biography, then there follows an overview of his literary legacy. Finally, we provide a brief literary analysis of the chosen short story.

In the last part of the second chapter we've provided statistical data in the form of pie-charts. The percentage of different sentence types has been calculated, and also an analysis of how it effects the narration stylistically has been conducted. In the last subparagraph we've connected structural characteristics of the compound sentences with their stylistic implications.

The course paper consists of the introduction, two chapters, conclusions and the bibliography. The total number of pages is 57; the list of sources embraces 53 items.

The simple sentence

The simple sentence is built up by one predicative line: A drank some hot coffee on the way to work. The dominating type of a simple sentence with full predication (containing both the subject and the predicate) is called a two-member sentence. One-member sentences contain either the subject or the predicate which can’t be restored.

The composite sentence.

The word "composite" is used by H. Poutsma as a common term for both the compound and complex sentences [34].

There are three types of composite sentences in Modern English: compound, complex and compound-complex sentences [15].

1. The compound sentence contains two or more independent clauses with no dependent one: I create problems, and he knows how to handle them. It is usual to single out the following types of semantic relations between coordinative clauses: copulative, adversative, disjunctive, causal, consequential, and resultative.

2. The complex sentence contains one dependent clause and one or more independent clauses: She became so furious that she couldn't utter another word. According to their integral features all subordinate clauses are divided into four generalized types: clauses of primary nominal positions, clauses of secondary nominal positions, clauses of adverbial positions, clauses of parenthetical positions.

3. The compound-complex sentence combines the two previous types. The compound-complex sentences are those which have at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent (subordinate) clause in its structure: Her face has flashed a dazzling smile but it couldn't be more plain she was faking it.

Historically not all the grammarians were unanimous in this respect. According to it H. Sweet there are structurally two types of sentences: simple and complex [49].

One of the representatives of structural linguists Ch. Fries considers two kinds of composite sentences: sequence sentences and included sentences [29]. The sequence sentences consist of situation sentence and sequence sentence. He makes an attempt to reject the traditional classification and terms. His attitude towards the traditional concept of the compound sentence is primarily a matter of the punctuation of written texts.

Social background

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on October 16, 1854. Oscar was named in honour of his godfather, King Oscar I of Sweden.

Wilde's parents were quite prominent in Ireland's social life. His father, William Ralph Wills, was a internationally recognized surgeon who had received the appointment of Surgeon Oculist in Ordinary to the Queen. Wilde's mother, Francesca Elgee Wilde, was known in literary and political circles as "Speranza", a name she adopted to give hope to Irish nationalists and activists in the woman's rights movement.

Overall, the writer was raised in an atmosphere of upper-middle-class comfort, culture, and social scandal [33].

Education

Oscar was home schooled until the age of 9, being taught French and German by two governesses.

Wilde received an education appropriate to his station in life. When he was 10, he was sent to Portora Royal School (founded by King Charle s II) in Enniskillen, Ulster. In October 1971, he entered Trinity College in Dublin, where he distinguished himself by winning various prizes and medals, particularly for his learning in the classics. He later attended Magdalen College, Oxford.

At Oxford, Wilde developed the manner of poseur and was widely recognised by his fellow students as a brilliant talker. He had bright intellect and won many awards and honors throughout his life. In 1878 he won the Newdigate Prize for English verse for a poem "Ravenna".

Personal life

When Oscar was a young boy he often got ridiculed by his flamboyant and girly personality. He struggled all his life with his sexuality. He dealt with his hardships in many ways, a few of them being drinking and sexual relations, but most importantly, he wrote.

Wilde also had some financial problems. His income was meager and always short of his extravagant spending.

On May 29, 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, the beautiful young daughter of a Dublin barrister, whose small fortune helped to rectify his financial difficulties [41]. They had two children — Cyril and Vyvyan.

In 1891, Wilde was introduced to Lord Alfred Douglas, then a student at Oxford and a handsome and spoiled young man. The two quickly struck an intimate friendship and soon became lovers as well as literary collaborators.

Social life

Oscar Wilde spent most of his social life in London among high society characters. Even before he left the University in 1878 Wilde had become known as one of the most affected of the prefessors of the aesthetic movement. He quickly became a prominent personality in literary and socal circles. In 1880's Wilde established himself as a writer, poet, and lecturer [26].

In 1882, due to the growing popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s satirical opera, Patience, Wilde was invited to visit the United States on a lecture tour of the “decorative arts,” which was very successful.

In 1887 Wilde became editor of The Woman’s World, a progressive magazine, and held that position for two years.

The period of Wilde's true achievement began when he published "The Happy Prince and other tales" in 1888. He garnered acclaim at first for his collections of stories and novels, and then for his great successes in theater [32].

Wilde's only novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890), attracted much attention, and his sayings past from mouth to mouth as those of one of the professed wits of the age.

To his benefit, Oscars controversial wit and over-the-top personality was portrayed in many of his famous playwrights. Soon enough his life was in the lime light, he traveled from city to city and had a wide range of friends.

However, some facts of Wilde's personal life, namely, his highly publicized homosexual affair, have caused him to fall in social disgrace. In 1895 Wilde sued Marquees of Queensberry for criminal libel after the Marquees called him a sodomite. Wilde was tried at Old Bailey Court, and rigorous cross-examination revealed his homosexuality. He was arrested and convicted of committing “gross indecency.”

Wilde emerged from prison two years after, physically depleted, emotionally exhausted and flat broke. Wilde wrote very little during his last years; the only notable work was a poem he completed in 1898 about his experiences in prison, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." In October 1900, Wilde died of meningitis at the age of 46. His tomb, sculpted by Sir Jacob Epstein, is in PereLachaise Cemetery, Paris.

The main ideas

Wilde was the most popular spokesman in the late XIX century advocating the doctrine of aestheticism, which insisted that art should be primarily concerned with "art for art's sake", not with politics, religion, science, or bourgeois morality. These ideas were mainly inspired by English critics Algernon Charles Swinburne and Walter Pater [37].

Being a romanticist, Wildean humanistic aesthetics was more concerned with the individual, the self, than societal problems. Wilde thought that the only moral value was the ideal of beauty in nature and in person. However, he claimed that beauty was not the reflection of realistic life, but contrary, it was just the product of artist's imagination. That is why he confirmed that art was existing independent of the life and was developing according to its own laws.

Wilde's ethics and aesthetics were an expression of the profound crisis of bourgeois art in general, and of bourgeois' aesthetics that signify the end of Victorian era. In his plays Wilde mocked Victorian society with its narrow-mindedness and swaggering morals. In The Importance of Being Earnest the author shows what desperately useless lives his characters are leading. Wilde rebels most earnestly against London's upper crust's limitedness and impregnable complacency.

Although O. Wilde strongly opposes hypocrisy, his opposition bears no effective resistance, and he seeks no way out of the spiritual deadlock experienced by his generation. For, ironically, O. Wilde, a bourgeois intelligent himself, was too closely connected with the society he made fun of; that is why the accusatory ring of his plays weakens from comedy to comedy, the strongest ring being expressed in An Ideal Husband [10].

In conclusion, we may say that the inference drawn by O. Wilde about utter incompatibility of real art and the bourgeois way of life is perfectly consistent, however, his idea about the incompatibility of art and realism is erroneous and somewhat misguided.

Many literary critics studied O. Wilde's legacy, among others, Nick Frankel, Gary H. Paterson, Peter Ackroyd, Karen Alkalay-Gut, Stephen Rowley, and William Terpening.

Narration / Point of view

The story is told from an omniscient narrator. The narrator uses the third person to tell the story and he is not involved in it.

Specific Setting

1) Time: winter (day and night);

2) Places: the Student's garden, the Nightingale's nest in the holm-oak tree, the boy's room and the Professor's house.

Mood: sad and very emotional; dark and tragic.

System of characters:

I. Main characters:

Protagonists:

— The Nightingale: empathic, unselfish, motherly, kind, self-sacrificail, determined, brave, impulsive;

— The Student: naive, superficial, unexperienced, intelligent, but not wise; his love for the girl lacks depth and passion.

Antagonist:

— Professor's daughter: a selfish, materialistic girl.

II. Secondary (minor) characters: Lizard, Butterfly and Daisy (mere observers, symbolize the cynic people); White Rose Tree, Yellow Rose Tree, Red Rose Tree, Chamberlain's nephew.

Symbols:

1) The rose: love, beauty and passion (it is hard to find and sometimes it involves sacrifices and pain); the unattainable / fantasy;

2) The Nightingale: romance, utopian love, nurture, sacrifice;

3) White: purity and innocence;

4) Red: love and passion;

5) The student: naiveness, intelligence;

6) Professor's daughter: fickleness of love, insincerity;

7) Oak tree: wisdom;

8) Thorn: death, suffering;

9) Jewels: material possessions, greed.

Some of the symbols have biblical aspects.

Archetypal interpretation:

The caregiver — The Nightingale;

The Sage — The Student;

The Magician — The Red Rose Tree;

The Skeptic — The Lizard;

Stylistic devices:

Personification: The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn.

Simile: His hair is dark as hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose.

Hyperbole: S he will dance so lightly that her feet will not touch the floor.

Metaphor: She sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid.

Repetition: Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song.

Allusion: Life is very dear to all. It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pear.

Polysyndeton & gradation: But the Nightingale's voice grew faiter, and her little wings began to beat, and a film came over her eyes.

Irony: The Nightingale calles the Student «the last true lover», when in truth his feelings lack depth and passion. The most cruel bit of irony resides in the fact that

the Nightingale's sacrifice has gone to waste and her feat was never acknowledged.

Possible interpretation

The short story also demonstrates Wilde's dissatisfaction about the alienation towards him and his ideas [33]. Nightingale is a symbol of Wilde himself. He expresses his grievances through this short story that he is like the nightingale, producing art with blood from his heart, whereas the world is too insensitive and conservative to notice. The implication being that a society that suffers from hypocrisy and spiritual emptiness simply cannot aknowledge such «nightingales».

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, for example: “ Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?”

Parallelisms

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) Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place; it may not be purchased of the merchants, 'or can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.

2) His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his lace like pale Ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow.

3) The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air.

These compound sentences follow the same syntactical and logical pattern.

Parceling is intentional splitting of sentences into smaller parts separated by full stops [23]: Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she felt something choking her in her throat. Then she gave one last burst of music. Here parceling is used for the sake of dramatical effect so as to build up emotional tension.

One of the peculiar syntactic features used in the story is a presence of syntactical returns, as in: “ the Chamberlain's nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers”. This helps the reader understand some logical relations and emphasizes a cold reasoning of the heroine.

In general, it worth noting that compound sentences contribute to the rythmical organisation of the speech and sometimes even make it sound more melodic: Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams.

Conclusion

In the chapter 2 there were outlined the main syntactic and stylistic characteristics of the compound sentences represented in O. Wilde's short story “The Nightingale and the Rose”.

The first paragraph characterized the many facets of O. Wilde's literary legacy.

In particular, we've focused on the facts of his biography in the subsection 2.1.1. The main aspects reviewed were social background, education, personal and social life.

The list of the most prominent literary works by O. Wilde is also included along with the topics he addressed in the subparagraph 2.1.2. We've outlined the main ideas that were professed and advocated by the writer and described the literary works that served this cause. In particular, we've expended upon his ideas of the nature of art and the functions it plays in society. It was determined that O. Wiled belonged to an Aethsetical movement which professed the “art for the sake of art”. Some of the contradictions of the Victorian era and the way they were portrayed in O. Wilde's works were also pointed out.

Subsection 2.1.3. is dedicated to the literary analysis of the chosen short story – “The Nightingale and the Rose”. It encompasses defining genre, theme, main idea, conflict, range of problems, type of narration, and mood; describing system of characters, stylistic devices and symbols, and also interpreting the short story.

The second paragraph of the chapter focuses mainly on the syntactic analysis of the compound sentences represented in the short story “The Nightingale and the Rose” from the point of view of their type, structure, connective devices and semantical relations employed, as well as their stylistic 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 compound 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 compound sentences in connection to their structure are described in the subparagraph 2.2.3.

GENERAL CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE COURSE PAPER

 

Compound sentences constitute a huge part of our daily communication. Moreover, they can present such types of relations between clauses that the sequence of simple sentences simply cannot convey, for they can render different types of semantical and logical relations.

Although a compound sentence is a polypredicative stucture that is organized on the basis of parataxis and doesn't involve elements of dependency, the relation between the coordinate clauses if often assymetrical (with the first clause taking on the leading role in the sentence).

These semantical and structural features of compound sentences also create conditions for employing differet stylistic devices.

The present paper doesn't claim to be exhaustive concerning the ways in which compound sentences function in modern English. However, we have taken a fresh perspective on different explanations of this grammatical phenomenon, outlined 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 Nightingale and the Rose" by O. Wilde.

Upon conducting the present research we fulfiled the following aims:

1) to provide a general account of the main sentence types in English in order to promote the basic understanding of the place that compound sentences occupy in this classification;

2) to define syntactical nature of the compound sentence and its structural constituents;

3) to analyze and systematize different types of compound sentences;

4) to find the correlation between compound and complex sentences;

5) to research the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O. Wildein regard to the syntactic characteristics of compound sentences;

6) to identify the role of compound sentences in the story as it pertains to the use of different stylistic devices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

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

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. Ackroyd, Peter, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, London: Penguin, 1993.

10. Bartlett, Neil, Who was that Man? A present for Mr. Oscar Wilde, London: Serpent's Tail, 1988.

11. Beckson, Karl E. London in the 1890s: A Cultural History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992.

12. Beckson, Karl, Oscar Wilde. The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 1970.

13. Beerbohm, Max, "The Happy Hypocrite", David Cecil (ed.), The Bodley Head Max Beerbohm, London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1970, pp. 19 -51.

14. Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Verso, 1997.

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

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

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

18. Collins COBUILD English Grammar. London and Glasgow, 1990, р.485.

19. Croft-Cooke, Rupert, The Unrecorded Life of Oscar Wilde, London: W.H. Allen, 1972.

20. Dick, S. Coordination. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1968.

21. Dollimore, Jonathan, "Different Desires: Subjectivity and Transgression in Wilde and Gide", Textual-Practice, Andover, Hants, England, 1987 Spring, 1:1, pp. 48 - 67.

22. Douglas A., Strumpf M. Webster's New World Guide to Punctuation, New York: Webster's New World, 1988, 116 p.

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

24. Ellmann, Richard (ed.), Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays, London: Prentice-Hall International, 1969.

25. Ellmann, Richard (ed.), The Artist as Critic. Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde, London: W.H. Allan, 1970.

26. Ellmann, Richard, Oscar Wilde, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987.

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29. Fries, Charles. The Structure of English, An Introduction to the Construction of English Sentences. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1963.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER 1. Compound SENTENCES AND THEIR STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS..........................................................6

1.1. Compound sentence as a type of a composite sentence..................................................................................................6

1.1.1. Classification of Sentences in English............................................7

1.1.2. Compound and Semi-compound Sentences..................................11

1.1.3. Conjunctive and Non-conjunctive Coordination...........................14

1.2. The Means of Expressing Logico-semantic Relations between Coordinate Clauses...............................................................................17

1.2.1. Types of Coordination in a Compound Sentence..........................19

1.2.2. Semantical Correlation with the Subordinative Connections.......23

1.2.3. Punctuating Compound Sentences................................................25

Conclusion..........................................................................................................29

CHAPTER 2. SYNTACTIC AND STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND SENTENCES AND THEIR FUNCTION IN "THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE" BY OSCAR WILDE.....................................30

2.1. The many facets of Oscar Wilde's literary legacy......................................30

2.1.1. B iographical portrayal of Oscar Wilde..........................................32

2.1.2. General review of O. Wilde's oeuvre.............................................36

2.1.3. Literary analysis of the short story “The Nightingale and the Rose”.............................................................................................39

2.2. The syntactic analysis of compound sentences in the short story “The Nightingale and the Rose” by O. Wilde............................................................42

2.2.1. The use of different sentence types in the story.............................43

2.2.2. Compound sentence types represented in the literary work..........45

2.2.3. The use of literary devices employed in the story in regard to the structure of compound sentences.................................................49

Conclusion …………………………………………………………........52

GENERAL CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE COURSE PAPER.....53

BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………......…………………….......…….54

Introduction

 

Grammatical features of different sentence types have always captured linguist's attention who have build up a large body of scientific works regarding topical grammatical phenomena in XX-XXI centuries. The study of compound sentences is intrinsically pertinent to those issues as it focuses on a polyfunctional language unit which embraces a whole spectrum of syntactical, logical, semantical, and communicative characteristics. Therefore we've chosen the topic of our thesis to be “Compound sentences in modern English”.

Theoretical foundation of the paper was formed by such scholars as E.Harman, K. Polanski, S. Dick, N. Kobrina, A. Korneyeva, M.Y.Blokh, Ch. Collins, H. Stokoe, B. A. Illish, B. S. Khaimovich, B. I. Rogovskaya, Ch. Fries and others.

The topicality of this paper deals with the necessity of finding new approaches to the analysis of compound sentences used in literary works due to the variety of their logico-semantical, structural and communicative types and due to the creative ways in which the authors tend to use them.

The objective of this paper is to describe and specify different types of compound sentences, their characteristics and the way they function in modern English. The following tasks are needed to be carried out in order to fulfil this objective:

1) to provide a general account of the main sentence types in English in order to promote the basic understanding of the place that compound sentences occupy in this classification;

2) to define syntactical nature of the compound sentence and its structural constituents;

3) to analyse and systematize different types of compound sentences;

4) to find the correlation between compound and complex sentences;

5) to research the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O. Wildein regard to the syntactic characteristics of compound sentences;

6) to identify the role of compound sentences in the story as it pertains to the use of different stylistic devices.

The object under study is the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O.Wilde, and the subject of the present course paper is the syntactic peculiarities of compound sentences in this literary work.

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

The research is of theoretical, analytical and descriptive character. The procedure of data analysis is based on close reading and text analysis.

The significance of the study. This research would constitute practical importance to those who are interested in English grammar, in particular, compound and semi-compound sentences. The paper may provide a valuable insight into the ways of analysing different compound sentence structures in terms of the ways in which they are connected.

The scientific novelty of the paper deals with the systematization of different syntactical phenomena pertaining to compound sentences. Also, very little research has been done so far regarding compound sentence structure analysis of O. Wilde'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 compound sentence and its place among other syntactic structures of modern English. A comprehensive typology of compound sentences was given in the second paragraph.

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

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

Chapter 1. Compound sentences and their structural and functional characteristics;

Chapter 2. Syntactic and stylistic analysis of the compound sentences and their function in "The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde.

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

After thoroughly considering the types of sentences existent in English today, we narrow our focus down to the compound sentences only. In the second paragraph of Chapter 1 we analyse various relations between different coordinate clauses and the peculiarities of their formal markers, namely, coordinate conjunctions and connective words of adverbial nature.

The last subparagraph of the theoretical part of the work is dedicated to the problem of punctuating compound sentences. First, we have reviewed the most general rules of punctuating the coordinate clauses, and then extended on its peculiarities as it pertains to four basic logico-semantical types of relations realized in the compound sentences.

In the second chapter we sustain all the theoretical statements and exemplify them using textual material from the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O. Wilde.

The chapter starts off with the description of the writer's biography, then there follows an overview of his literary legacy. Finally, we provide a brief literary analysis of the chosen short story.

In the last part of the second chapter we've provided statistical data in the form of pie-charts. The percentage of different sentence types has been calculated, and also an analysis of how it effects the narration stylistically has been conducted. In the last subparagraph we've connected structural characteristics of the compound sentences with their stylistic implications.

The course paper consists of the introduction, two chapters, conclusions and the bibliography. The total number of pages is 57; the list of sources embraces 53 items.

CHAPTER 1. Compound SENTENCES AND THEIR STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS