Compound and Complex Sentences. Connectives

Compound and complex sentences existed in the English lan­guage since the earliest times. Even in the oldest texts we find numerous instances of coordination and subordination and a large inventory of subordinate clauses, subject clauses, object clauses, attributive clauses, adverbial clauses. And yet many constructions — especially in early original prose — look clumsy, loosely connected, disorderly and wanting precision, which is natural in a language whose written form had only begun to grow.

Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and, a conjunc­tion of a most general meaning, which could connect statements with various semantic relations. The ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES abound (it successions of clauses or sentences all beginning with and, e.g.:

And pa on3eat se сутпз paet ond he, on pa duru code, and pa unbeanlice I him: werede, op he on pone aepeling locude, and pa ut raesde on hine, mul hine miclum 3ewundode; and hie alle on pone суninз wseron feoh-Irnde, op paet hie hine ofslae3enne haefdon, 'and then the king saw that, pud he went to the door, and then bravely defended himself, until he imw that noble, and then out rushed on him, and wounded him severely, end they were all fighting against that king until they had him slain' (In the earliest part of the CHRONICLES A.D. 755).

Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause (“termed correlation") was common in complex sentences: pa he t>«r to 3efaren waes, pa eodon hie to hlora scipum 'then (when) in came there, then they went to their ship.'

Attributive clauses were joined to the principal clauses by means all various connectives, there being no special class of relative pronouns. The main connective was the indeclinable particle pe employed either .i lone or together with demonstrative and personal pronouns:

and him cypdon paet hiera maJ3as him mid watron, pa pe him from noldon 'and told him that their kinsmen were with him, those that did not want (to go) from him'.

The pronouns could also be used to join the clauses without the partide pe:

Hit selamp зio paette an hearpere waes on pare 6iode de Dracia hatte, tlo wass on Creca rice; se hearpere waes swiзe unsefraesllce sod, daes nama wies Orfeus; he haefde an swlSe amlic wif, sio waes haten Eurydice 'It happened once that there was a harper among the people on the land that was called Thrace, that was in the kingdom of Crete; that harper was incredibly good; whose name (the name of that) was Orpheus; he had an excellent wife; that was called Eurydice'.

The pronoun and conjunction paet was used to introduce object clauses and adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words: 06 daet 'until', sir, рвет ре 'before', pset 'so that' as in:

Isaac ealdode and his eазаn pystrodon, pset he ne mihte nan ping geseon 'Then Isaac grew old and his eyes became blind so that he could not see anything'.

Some clauses are regarded as intermediate between coordi­nate and subordinate: they are joined asyndetically and their status is not clear:

pa waes sum consul, Boethius waes haten 'There was then a consul, Boethius was called' (perhaps attributive: '(who) was called Boethius* or co-ordinate '(he) was called Boethius'). In the course of OE the structure of the complex sentence was соsiderably improved, AElfric, the greatest writer of the late 10th— early 11th c, employed a variety of connectives indicating the relations between the clauses with greater clarity and precision.