3.06.

2019

a) You’re smart but your English is poor.

b) You’re smart and your English is poor.
c) You’re smart, even though your English is poor.

What is ‘sentence’?

Grammatically:
- The highest grammatical unit
- consists of one independent clause, or two+ related clauses

Orthographically and rhetorically:

- starts with a capital letter
- ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark

Complex sentence

Complex sentence = min. two clauses of equal status, or two clauses of unequal
status

Coordinated and appositive clauses have equal status

Dependent clauses have an unequal status with respect to a main clause

In Everyday English…

Coordination and dependency typically interrelate in various patterns that

contribute to produce flexible and dynamic discourse.

What do clause combinations do?

Clause combinations reflect the cognitive organisation of our experience into

what is more salient and foregrounded, and what is less salient and
backgrounded.
Types of relations between clauses:

1. syntactic
1.1 coordination
1.2 subordination
2. semantic
1.1clarification
1.2 narration
1.3contrast
1.4elaboration

[foreground vs background]

You can do whatever you want to,

if you are willing to work hard enough.

If you are willing to work hard enough,

you can do whatever you want to.

Syntactic relations

Coordination – relationship between units of equal status and similar form

semantically, the contents of the two clauses is relevant to each other in some way

1. I don’t like it and I don’t want it.

2. You can keep it or you can give it away.
3. It’s a fine piece of furniture, but (it is) too large for this room.

Coordination of dependent clauses

Dependent clauses may be coordinated as long as they have the same function:

It’s much nicer here when the rain stops and (when) the sun comes out)
(finite dependent circumstantial clauses as A)

She sat there, watching television and eating chocolates.

(non-finite -ing dependent supplementive clauses as A)

How is linking marked?

- by coordinating conjunctions
(‘coordinators’ for short) and, or and but
- when listing a series of elements, explicit links may be omitted,
(coordinator typically retained between the last two items).
- Coordinator can be replaced by a comma in short conjoined clauses, e.g.:

This one’s yours, that one’s mine.

Apposition

When:
clauses lack explicit formal link
clauses present relationship of equivalence
relation of relevance can be inferred ‘bridging assumption’

1. It must be genuine; it has the hallmark.

(appositive clauses)
2. Tom is an astrophysicist and works at the CERN in Geneva
(coordinated clauses)
3. Tom is an astrophysicist; he works at the CERN in Geneva.
(appositive clauses)