INSERTED CLAUSES

By an inserted clause we mean a clause appearing within another clause and interrupting its structure. A clause of this kind may either be asyndetic, or it may be introduced by a conjunction, most usually perhaps by the conjunction for. An inserted clause usually contains some information serving to elucidate what is said in the main body of the sentence, or it may be a casual interruption due to the speaker suddenly thinking of something vaguely connected with what he is talking about, etc. There is certainly no reason to term an inserted clause subordinate, since no signs of subordination are to be found. Neither is there any valid reason for saying it is co-ordinate in the sense that clauses are co-ordinate within a compound sentence. Indeed there are no clear signs which would prove that a sentence with an inserted clause is a composite sentence at all — though this of course depends on the exact interpretation we give of the notion of "composite sentence". The question whether a sentence with an inserted clause should or should not be considered a composite sentence is, after all, of little theoretical interest, and we here content ourselves with stating that we will not take it as composite. The sentence with the inserted clause taken out of it is a simple sentence (unless of course it contains coordinate or subordinate clauses) and with the inserted clause it may be reckoned as a special type — a simple sentence with an inserted clause.

Now let us consider a few examples of a sentence with an inserted clause. In our first example the clause coming between the predicate and the subject of the main clause contains information about the author of the statement,- and in this respect is is akin to parenthetical clauses. The bird-fancier could tell him little, but there was, he had declared, no doubt a great deal of information on the subject somewhere in his notes and as soon as they were properly indexed he would exhume it. (BUECHNER)

In the two following examples the inserted clause has nothing of a parenthesis about it: Before he went down — patent leather was his final choice — he looked at himself critically in the glass. (HUXLEY) In the Times, therefore — he had a distrust of other papers — he

826 Asyndetic Composite Sentences. Inserted Clauses

read the announcement for the evening. (GALSWORTHY) The inserted clause he had a distrust of other papers explains why he (old Jolyon Forsyte) took up the "Times", and at the same time it adds a certain characteristic feature to the portrait of the man. If the clause were introduced by the conjunction for, which would not involve any essential change of meaning but would only make it somewhat more explicit, the clause would still be an inserted clause.

Our next example is somewhat different: There was a great deal more pleasure than formerly, pleasure was practically continuous — dancing at the Country Club every Saturday night in summer and quite often in winter, lunch with cards or golf and dinner parties — Wilson and she had at least four or five invitations every week — and short and long trips by automobile. (HERGESHEIMER) The inserted clause Wilson and she had at least four or five invitations every week comes in and interrupts a sequence of appositions to the subject pleasure, namely, dancing... lunch... parties... trips. It comes after parties and makes it clear how frequent the parties were. It would hardly be possible here to add the conjunction for in front of the inserted clause: that would make the statement too exact and introduce an element of superfluous accuracy which is out of place here.

It must be owned, however, that the boundary line between inserted clauses remaining, as it were, outside the structure of the sentence proper, and clauses making part of that structure, is not always easy to draw; in certain cases it may depend on the grammarian's view, that is, it may be to some extent arbitrary. We may, then, either leave the question open, or decide in advance that doubtful cases of this kind will be judged in a definite way, for instance, that we will consider such doubtful sentences to be inserted.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF MIXED SENTENCES

It would be vain to expect that every sentence we can meet with in a text is bound to be either syndetic or asyndetic, either compound or complex, etc. Several or indeed all of these characteristics may be found in a sentence at the same time. It may, for instance, consist of several clauses, some of them connected with each other syndetically, i. e. by conjunctions or connective words, while others are connected asyndetically, i. e. without any such words; it is also possible that some of the clauses are co-ordinated with each other, so that a certain part of the whole sentence is compound, while others are subordinate, so that another part of the whole sentence is complex, etc. The amount of variations is here probably bound-

Different Types of Mixed Sentences 327

less, though to assert this with any degree of certainty a detailed study of a great number of texts would have to be made.

It would serve no useful purpose to invent special terms for every possible variety of sentence that might be found. It will perhaps be best to term them "mixed sentences". Here is an example of a mixed sentence showing simultaneously several of the syntactical peculiarities which we have so far studied separately: Barbary did not tell Mavis where she had stored the things; the sly secrecy of the maquis rose in her; she said she had hidden them somewhere safe. (R. MACAULAY)

Поиск по сайту: