Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

compound sentence
is used to describe structures which have more than
one clause in them, and where these clauses are of equal grammatical status.
Compound sentences are built up through the technique of coordination (see A3)
and they rely on a fixed set of coordinating conjunctions like 
and
, 
or
, 
but
, 
so
, 
for
,
and 
yet
. Each of examples 2–4 are 
single
compound sentences which contain within
them 
two
coordinated clauses:
(2)
He ate his supper and he went to bed.
(3)
He ate his supper so he went to bed.
(4)
He ate his supper but he went to bed shortly after.
The best way of conceptualising the structure of compound sentences, using the
‘boxes’ analogy, is to imagine them as linked together like square beads on string,
thus:
Compound sentences can perform a variety of functions, and the symmetrical
nature of the connection between their units makes them a favoured style in mate-
rial designed for junior readers. This fragment from a popular nursery rhyme is a
compound sentence containing three coordinated clauses:
(5)
He huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down.
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A similar technique of coordination is at work in this sequence from Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea
:
They sat on the terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he
was not angry.
(Hemingway 1960: 3)
Notice how this is coordination of the most basic sort. The direct coordinator 
and
takes precedence over an ‘adversative’ conjunction like 
but, 
even when one might
expect the latter. The adversative would after all impart some sense of contrast
between the last two conjuncts – ‘many of the fishermen made fun of the old man
but
he was not angry’ – yet the narratorial perspective is kept almost wilfully non-
interpretative here (see further C8).
Complex sentences
involve two possible structural configurations, but their main
informing principle is that the clauses they contain are in an asymmetrical relation-
ship to one another. The first configuration involves 
subordination
, where the
subordinate clause is appended to a main clause. To form this pattern, subordinating
conjunctions are used and these include 
when, although, if, because 
and
since
. As
further variations on the sample sentences used so far, consider the following exam-
ples which are all two-clause complex sentences:
(6)
When he had eaten his supper, he went to bed.
(7)
Having eaten his supper, he went to bed.
(8)
Although he had just eaten his supper, he went to bed.
(9)
If he has eaten his supper, he must have gone to bed.
The conceptual structure for the subordinate relationship is to imagine that one box
leans on another thus:
The main clause is the supporting box which, if taken away, will cause the (subor-
dinate) box leaning on it to topple.
The second type of complex sentence involves the 
embedding
of one structure inside
another. To put it another way, this pattern involves taking a unit at the rank of clause
and squeezing it inside another clause. This means that the embedded clause has 
had to be pulled down a rank (‘downranked’) in order to fit inside a structure of equal
size. Here are some examples of complex sentences containing downranked clauses:
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(10) Mary realised he had eaten his supper.
(11) She announced that he had gone to bed.
(12) That he had eaten his supper was obvious to everyone.
Highlighting the capacity of grammar to embed units within other units of varying
sizes, the ‘boxes’ analogy conceives this structure conceptually as:
The outside box is the main clause and nested inside it is any number of downranked
clauses. You can test for the main elements in each of examples (10) to (12), sorting
out which is the matrix clause and which is the embedded, by using the various 
grammatical tests provided in A3.
Trailing constituents and anticipatory constituents
Although coordination between clauses is a founding principle of compound
sentences, the same operation can be performed on other grammatical ranks. For
example, words and phrases, as opposed to clauses, may be coordinated, as indicated
by the following well-known couplet from Shakespeare’s