s, that whereas the composite sentence exposes as its logical centre, ie the core of its purpose of communication, the intention of the speaker to inform his table-companions of a certain fact (which turns out to be already known to them), the sentential sequence expresses the events in their natural temporal succession, which actually destroys the original purpose of communication. Any formation of a sentential sequence more equivalent to the given composite sentence by its semantic status than the one shown above has to be expanded by additional elucidative prop-utterances with back-references; and all the same, the resulting contextual string, if it is intended as a real informational substitute for the initial composite, will hardly be effected without the help of some kind of essentially composite sentence constructions included in it (let the reader himself try to construct an equivalent textual sequence meeting the described semantic requirements).
As we see, the composite sentence in its quality of a structural unit of language is indispensable for language by its own purely semantic merits, let alone its terseness, as well as intellectual elegance of expression.
As is well known, the use of composite sentences, especially long and logically intricate ones, is characteristic of literary written speech rather than colloquial oral speech. This unquestionable fact is explained by the three reasons: one relating to the actual needs of expression; one relating to the possibilities of production; and one relating to the conditions of perception. p align="justify"> That the composite sentence structure answers the special needs of written mode of lingual expression is quite evident. It is this type of speech that deals with lengthy reasonings, descriptions, narrations, all presenting abundant details of intricate correlations of logical premises and inferences, of situational foreground and background, of sequences of events interrupted by cross-references and parenthetical comments. Only a composite sentence can adequately and within reasonable bounds of textual space fulfil these semantic requirements. p align="justify"> Now, the said requirements, fortunately, go together with the fact that in writing it is actually possible to produce long composite sentences of complicated, but logically flawless structure (the second of the advanced reasons). This is possible here because the written sentence, while in the process of being produced, is open to various alterations: it allows corrections of slips and errors; it can be subjected to curtailing or expanding; it admits of rearranging and reformulating one's ideas; in short, it can be prepared. This latter factor is of crucial importance, so that when considering the properties of literary written speech we must always bear it in mind. Indeed, from the linguistic point of view written speech is above all prepared, or "edited" speech: it is due to no other quality than being prepared before its presentation to the addressee that this mode of speech is structurally so tellingly different from colloquial oral speech. Employing the words in their broader sense, we may say that literary written speech is not just uttered and gone, but is always more carefully or less carefully composed in advance, being meant for a future use of the reader, often for his repeated use. In distinction to this, genuine colloquial oral speech is uttered each time in an irretrievably complete and final form, each time for one immediate and fleeting occasion. p align="justify"> We have covered the first two reasons explaining the composite sentence of increased complexity as a specific feature of written speech. The third reason, referring to the conditions of perception, is inseparable from the former two. Namely, if written text provides for the possibility for its producer to return to the beginning of each sentence with the aim of assessing its form and content, of rearranging or re-composing it altogether, it also enables the reader, after he has run through the text for the first time, to go back to its starting line and re-read it with as much care as will be required for the final understanding of each item and logical connection expressed by its wording or implied by its construction. Thus, the length limit imposed on the sentence by the recipient's immediate (operative) memory can in writing be practically neglected; the volume of the written sentence is regulated not by memory limitations as such, but by the considerations of optimum logical-balance and stylistic well-formedness.
Logic and style being the true limiters of the written sentence volume, two dialectically contrasted active tendencies can be observed in the sentence-construction of modern printed texts. According to the first tendency, a given unity of reasons in meditation, a natural sequence of descriptive ...
