situations or narrative events is to be reflected in one composite sentence, however long and structurally complicated it might prove. According to the second, directly opposite tendency, for a given unity of reflected events or reasons, each of them is to be presented by one separate simple sentence, the whole complex of reflections forming a multisentential paragraph. The two tendencies are always in a state of confrontation, and which of them will take an upper hand in this or that concrete case of text production has to be decided out of various considerations of form and meaning relating to both contextual and con-situational conditions (including, among other things, the general purpose of the work in question, as well as the preferences and idiosyncrasies of its users).
Observe, for instance, the following complex sentence of mixed narrative-reasoning nature:
Once Mary waved her hand as she recognised her driver, but he took no notice of her, only whipping his horses the harder, and she realised with a rather helpless sense of futility that so far as other people were concerned she must be considered in the same light as her uncle, and that even if she tried to walk to Boduin or Launceston no one would receive her, and the door would be shut in her face (D. du Maurier).
The sentence has its established status in the expressive context of the novel, and in this sense it is unrearrangeable. On the other hand, its referential plane can be rendered by a multisentential paragraph, plainer in form, but somewhat more natural to the unsophisticated perceptions:
Once Mary recognised her driver. She waved her hand to him. But he took no notice of her. He only whipped his horses the harder. And she realised that so far as other people were concerned she must be considered in the same light as her uncle. This gave her a rather helpless sense of futility. Even if she tried to walk to Boduin or Launceston no one would receive her. Quite the contrary, the door would be shut in her face. p align="justify"> One long composite sentence has been divided into eight short sentences. Characteristically, though, in our simplification we could not do without the composite sentence structure as such: two of the sentential units in the adaptation (respectively, the fourth and the sixth) have retained their compositive features, and these structural properties seem to be indispensable for the functional adequacy of the rearranged passage.
The cited example of syntactic re-formation of text will help us formulate the following composition rule of good non-fiction (neutral) prose style: in neutral written speech each sentence construction should be as simple as can be permitted by the semantic context.
В§ 4. We have emphatically pointed out in due course (see Ch. I) the oral basis of human language: the primary lingual matter is phonetical, so that each and every lingual utterance given in a graphic form has essentially a representative character, its speech referent being constructed of so many phones organised in a rhythmo-melodical sequence. On the other hand, and this has also been noted before, writing in a literary language acquires a relatively self-sufficient status in so far as a tremendous proportion of what is actually written in society is not meant for an oral reproduction at all: though read and re-read by those to whom it has been addressed, it is destined to remain "silent" for ever. The "silent" nature of written speech with all its peculiarities leads to the development of specifically written featu res of language, among which, as we have just seen, the composite sentence of increased complexity occupies one of the most prominent places. Now, as a natural consequence of this development, the peculiar features of written speech begin to influence oral speech, whose syntax becomes liable to display ever more syntactic properties directly borrowed from writing. p align="justify"> Moreover, as a result of active interaction between oral and written forms of language, a new variety of speech has arisen that has an intermediary status. This type of speech, being explicitly oral, is at the same time prepared and edited, and more often than not it is directly reproduced from the written text, or else from its epitomised version (theses). This intermediary written-oral speech should be given a special linguistic name, for which we suggest the term В»scripted speech", ie speech read from the script. Here belong such forms of lingual communication as public report speech, lecturer speech, preacher speech, radio-and television-broadcast speech, each of them existing in a variety of subtypes. p align="justify"> By way of example let us take the following passage from President Woodrow Wilson's address to the Congress urging it to authorise the U...
