Emancipation of subordinate clauses

I. Sometimes a temporal clause loses its character and tends to become independent of the clause it is connected with.

1.Of such a type might be a sentence which consists of a clause, narrating some situation and followed by a when-clause telling of an event which burst in to the situation and which is the central point of the whole sentence. Such a when-clause always follows the main clause. This is its grammatical peculiarity, e.g.:

a) She had just gone into her room and closed the door when she heard a man’s voice in the parlour, and in a few minutes she heard the closing of the bedroom door.

It is clear that the when-clause does not indicate the time when the action of the 1^st clause took place, but contains the statement which is the center of the whole composite sentence.

b) It was the middle of the August afternoon when Harry got back to his office… after lunch and he felt sluggish and downright lazy in the summer heat.

Again, the when-clause does not indicate the time when the action of the 1^st clause took place. It is the other way round: the 1^st clause indicates the time when the action of the when-clause took place. This way of constructing the sentence is designed to lay the main stress on the time indication and mark it out as the rheme of the sentence.

c) The next Friday afternoon he was walking slowly along the street… when Judge Price crossed the lawn.

Here the reasons for calling the when-clause a subordinate one, are very much weakened. It does not indicate the time when the action of the 1^st clause took place, nor does it in any way correspond to an adverbial modifier of time in a simple sentence. Thus, the when-clause is not a subordinate one and this not a complex sentence. This might be termed emancipation of a subordinate clause.

II. Another phenomenon of “emancipation” affects clauses introduced by the conjunction while and following the main clause.

The meaning of simultaneity of an action with another action expressed usually by the conjunction while, can change into a different meaning altogether e.g.:

M. briefly outlined the case for the independent sovereignty of Scotland, while Frieda listened without any remarkable interest.

Here the when-clause does not indicate the time when the action of the 1^st clause took place. It rather expresses an action opposed in its character to the first action and serves to characterize the doer of the action.

We might here put the conjunction and instead of while and the actual meaning would be the same thоugh the sentence would now be a compound one (cложносочиненное). Here the when-clause is not subordinate and the sentence is not complex (cложноподчиненное).

Yet, sometimes conjunction while expresses contrast rather than time relations even it precedes the main clause, e.g.:

While I have a certain amount of intelligence, I have no esthetic sense; while I possess the mathematical faculty, I am wholly without religious emotions; while I am addictied to venery, I have little ambition.

Here the connection between each of the while-clauses and the main clause following it, is based not on time but on contrast. The sentence gives a characteristic of a man and not a description of what he is doing at one time or another. Thus, a while-clause may express contrast even though it preceeds its head-word.