§ 1.The composite sentence, as different from the simple sentence, is formed by two or more predicative lines. Being a polypredicative construction, it expresses a complicated act of thought, i.e. an act of mental activity which falls into two or more intellectual efforts closely combined with one another. In terms of situations and events this means that thecomposite sentence reflects two or more elementary
situational events viewed as making up a unity; the constitutive connections of the events are expressed by the constitutive connections of the predicative lines of the sentence, i.e. by the sentential polypredication.
Each predicative unit in a composite sentence makes up a clause in it, so that a clause as part of a composite sentence corresponds to a separate sentence as part of a contextual sequence. E.g.:
When I sat down to dinner I looked for an opportunity to slip in casually the information that I had by accident run across the Driffields; but news travelled fast in Blackstable (S. Maugham).
The cited composite sentence includes four clauses which are related to one another on different semantic grounds. The sentences underlying the clauses are the following:
I sat down to dinner. I looked for an opportunity to slip in casually the information. I had by accident run across the Driffields. News travelled fast in Blackstable.
The correspondence of a predicative clause to a separate sentence is self-evident. On the other hand, the correspondence of a composite sentence to a genuine, logically connected sequence of simple sentences (underlying its clauses) is not evident at all; moreover, such kind of correspondence is in fact not obligatory, which is the very cause of the existence of the composite sentence in a language. Indeed, in the given example the independent sentences reconstructed from the predicative clauses do not make up any coherently presented situational unity; they are just so many utterances each expressing an event of self-sufficient significance. By way of rearrangement and the use of semantic connectors we may make them into a more or less explanatory situational sequence, but the exposition of the genuine logic of events, i.e. their presentation as natural parts of a unity, achieved by the composite sentence will not be, and is not to be replaced in principle. Cf.:
I ran by accident across the Driffields. At some time later on I sat down to dinner. While participating in the general conversation, I looked for an opportunity to slip in casually the information about my meeting them. But news travelled fast in Blackstable.
The logical difference between the given composite sentence and its contextually coherent de-compositional