The Composite Sentence.

The composite sentence is formed by two or more predicative lines (polypredicative construction). It reflects two or more elementary situational events making up a unity. Each predicative unit in a composite sentence makes up a clause. The clauses are related to one another on different semantic grounds. The use of composite sentences is characteristic of literary written speech rather than colloquial oral speech.

Composite sentences display two principal types of construction:

1) hypotaxis (subordination)

2) parataxis (coordination).

By coordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically equal rank (equipotently); by subordination, as units of unequal rank (dominatingly). By subordination one of the clauses (subordinate) is placed in a notional position of the other (principal): a subordinate clause, however important the information rendered by it might be for the whole communication, presents it as naturally supplementing the information of the principal clause. A subordinate clause in a complex sentence, as a rule, refers to one notional constituent (expressed by a word or a phrase) in a principal clause. A coordinate clause (sequential) in a compound sentence refers to the whole of the leading clause.

The means of combining clauses into a polypredicative sentence:

1) syndetic (conjunctional)

2) asyndetic (non-conjunctional).

All composite sentences are to be classed into:

1) compound sentences (coordinating their clauses)

2) complex sentences (subordinating their clauses).

Besides the classical types of coordination and subordination of clauses, there is found another case of the construction of composite sentence: sentences with parenthetical clauses. They are treated as specific cumulative constructions (composite-cumulative sentences): the continuative cumulation (the cumulated clause is in post-position to the expanded predicative construction) and parenthetical cumulation (the cumulated clause is in inter-position to the expanded predicative construction).

Alongside of completely composite sentences, there exist constructions with homogeneous predicates or verbid complexes which are treated under the heading of semi-composite sentences.