What Is a Compound Sentence?

Summary: Compound Sentences

A compound sentence is a sentence with at least two independent clauses and no dependent clauses. Looking at compound sentence examples can help you understand them, and in addition to that, here are the requirements for each main sentence type:

Simple sentence: one independent clause

Compound sentence: at least two independent clauses, no dependent clauses

Complex sentence: Exactly one independent clause, and at least one dependent clause Compound-complex sentence: At least two independent clauses, and at least one dependent clause As has been pointed out above, by asyndetic we mean composite sentences whose constituent clauses are not joined together either by a conjunction or by any kind of conjunctive word (relative pronoun or relative adverb: who, which, that, when, where, etc.).

This does not mean that there is nothing at all at the beginning of the second clause to express some kind of relation between the clauses. The second (or third, etc.) clause may begin with some word that does indicate some relation of this kind: for instance, if it begins with the adverb however,, this indicates a semantic relation between the clauses akin to that expressed by the co-ordinating conjunction but; if it begins by the adverb instead this, too, indicates some sort of relation. Something similar may be said about such words as nevertheless, nonetheless, therefore, notwithstanding, still, etc. It may also be said that a personal or demonstrative pronoun referring back to some person or thing mentioned in the first clause of an asyndetic composite sentence (the so-called anaphoric use) performs some connecting function. Yet we will consider sentences built in this way to be asyndetic, as they do not contain any grammatical link between the clauses.