WISE WEDNESDAY GRAMMAR: CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO NUMBER OF STATEMENTS (COMPOUND SENTENCES)

Part 2.

ANALYSIS OF SENTENCES.

CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO NUMBER OF STATEMENTS.

COMPOUND SENTENCES.

382. The compound sentence is a combination of two or more simple or complex sentences. While the complex sentence has only one main clause, the compound has two or more independent clauses making statements, questions, or commands. Hence the definition,-

383. A compound sentence is one which contains two or more independent clauses.
This leaves room for any number of subordinate clauses in a compound sentence: the requirement is simply that it have at least two independent clauses.
Examples of compound sentences:-

(1) Simple sentences united:"He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes."
(2) Simple with complex:"The trees of the forest, the waving grass, and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and he almost fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite."
(3) Complex with complex:"The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."

384. From this it is evident that nothing new is added to the work of analysis already done.
The same analysis of simple sentences is repeated in (1) and (2) above, and what was done in complex sentences is repeated in (2) and (3).
The division into members will be easier, for the coördinate independent statements are readily taken apart with the subordinate clauses attached, if there are any.
Thus in (1), the semicolons cut apart the independent members, which are simple statements; in (2), the semicolon separates the first, a simple member, from the second, a complex member; in (3), and connects the first and second complex members, and nor the second and third complex members.


385. The coördinate conjunctions and, nor, or but, etc., introduce independent clauses (see Sec. 297).
But the conjunction is often omitted in copulative and adversative clauses, as in Sec. 383 (1). Another example is, "Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray" (adversative).


386. The one point that will give trouble is the variable use of some connectives; as but, for, yet, while (whilst), however, whereas, etc. Some of these are now conjunctions, now adverbs or prepo sitions; others sometimes coördinate, sometimes subordinate conjunctions.
The student must watch the logical connection of the members of the sentence, and not the form of the connective.

Exercise.

Of the following illustrative sentences, tell which are compound, and which complex:-

1. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.
2. I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example, to find a pot of buried gold.
3. Your goodness must have some edge to it-else it is none.
4. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men.
5. A man cannot speak but he judges himself.
6. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life.
7. I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; that it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning.
8. We denote the primary wisdom as intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions.
9. Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts.
10. They measure the esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.
11. For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something.
12. I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one night; nay, I sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium, passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of experience.
13. However some may think him wanting in zeal, the most fanatical can find no taint of apostasy in any measure of his.
14. In this manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with more intelligence than is seen in many lads from the schools.

OUTLINE FOR ANALYZING COMPOUND SENTENCES.

387. (i) Separate it into its main members. (2) Analyze each complex member as in Sec. 381. (3) Analyze each simple member as in Sec. 364.

Exercise.

Analyze the following compound sentences:-

1. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain.
2. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur that he loves.
3. Love, and thou shalt be loved.
4. All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt.
5. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth.
6. He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives.
7. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will never know and honor him aright.
8. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them mount and expand.
9. We see the noble afar off, and they repel us; why should we intrude?
10. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books, in the instinctive faith that these will call it out and reveal us to ourselves.
11. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle when it is too late in the season to make hay?
12. "Strike," says the smith, "the iron is white;" "keep the rake," says the haymaker, "as nigh the scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake."
13. Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great, though they make an exception in your favor to all their rules of trade.
14. On the most profitable lie the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship.
15. The sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip up his claims, is as thin and timid as any; and the peace of society is often kept, because, as children, one is afraid, and the other dares not.
16. They will shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feign to confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope.
17. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sun to plow in its furrow.
18. Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.
19. When you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.
20. Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.
21. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies at its focus.
22. We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young, and dodge the account; or, if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.
23. So does culture with us; it ends in headache.
24. Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.
25. Thus journeys the mighty Ideal before us; it never was known to fall into the rear.

Reference

An English Grammar 1896 by W. M. Baskervill & J. W. Sewell

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