Analyze the following complex sentences:

1. Where there is a will, there is a way.

2. Take care lest you should fall.

3. When the rain stopped we set out for the next town where we had planned to stay the night.

4. The men managed to survive even though they were three days without water.

5. We will have plenty to eat, provided that no uninvited guests turn up.

6. He works hard that he may become rich.

7. Though he was strong he could not fight against three people at once.

8. His mother said that he had gone to the market to make some purchases.

9. If the dog was mine, I would have taken it to a veterinary doctor.

10. The man who did most to convince the world that slavery was unethical was Wilberforce.

Answers
1. Principal clause: There is a way
Subordinate clause: Where there is a will (Adverb clause of place/condition)

2. Principal clause: Take care

Subordinate clause: Lest you should fall (Adverb clause of purpose)

3. Principal clause: We set out for the next town

Subordinate clause: When the rain stopped (Adverb clause of time)

Subordinate clause: Where we had planned to stay the night (Adverb clause of place)

4. Principal clause: The men managed to survive

Subordinate clause: Even though they were three days without water (Adverb clause of concession)

5. Principal clause: We will have plenty to eat

Subordinate clause: Provided that no uninvited guests turn up. (Adverb clause of condition)

6. Principal clause: He works hard

Subordinate clause: That he may become rich. (Adverb clause of purpose)

7. Principal clause: He could not fight against three people at once

Subordinate clause: Though he was strong (Adverb clause of concession)
8. Principal clause: His mother said
Subordinate clause: That he had gone to the market to make some purchases (Noun clause)

9. Principal clause: I would have taken it to a veterinary doctor

Subordinate clause: If the dog was mine (Adverb clause of condition)

10. Principal clause: The man was Wilberforce

Subordinate clause: Who did most to convince the world (Adjective clause)
Subordinate clause: That slavery was unethical (Noun clause)

By leaving out essential elements in the language situation, we easily raise problems and difficulties,
which vanish when the whole transaction is considered in greater detail. Words, as everyone now
knows, "mean" nothing by themselves, although the belief that they did, as we shall see in the next
chapter, was once equally universal. It is only when a speaker makes use of them that they stand for
anything, or, in one sense, have "meaning." They are instruments. But besides this referential use for
which all reflective, intellectual use of language should be paramount, words have other functions which
may be grouped together as emotive. —C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning, pp. 9-
10.

loose

Christopher Columbus finally reached the shores of San Salvador after months of uncertainty at sea, the
threat of mutiny, and a shortage of food and water.

periodic

After months of uncertainty at sea, the threat of mutiny, and a shortage of food and water, Christopher
Columbus finally reached the shores of San Salvador.

Everything became a mist. —C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, p. 380.

He became a castaway in broad daylight.

—William Golding, Pincher Martin, p. 56.

Adjectival complements are more often the case:

The maid looked doubtful. —Dorothy Parker, "Big Blonde," Here Lies, p. 250.

His mind turned opaque at the word. —John Knowles, Indian Summer, p. 152.

The weather got worse than ever. —Edmund Wilson, Memoirs of Hecate County, p. 256.
Von Prum became ridiculous. —Robert Crichton, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, p. 322.

I kept dumb about my home life. —Janet Frame, The Reservoir, p. 55.

The body was growing rigid. —Philip Wylie, The Answer, p. 28.

His dream remained dormant. . . . —Carson McCullers, Clock without Hands, p. 174.

Her narrative grew less coherent here. . . . —John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy, p. 491.

Kingsley seemed unperturbed. —Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud, p. 133.

Marlowe became excited. —Hoyle, p. 134.

His legs felt weak. —Bernard Malamud, The Assistant, p. 45.

He felt uncomfortable. —Malamud, p. 77.

She looked old again. —Malamud, p. 149.

TYPE 3: THE INTRANSITIVE PATTERN, EXAMPLES

The following samples display various degrees of activity in the in- transitive pattern. It is interesting to
read the following sentences aloud

to see the differing effects, depending on what kind of word receives

strongest stress and what its position is in the pattern:

The world suffers. —Bernard Malamud, The Assistant, p. 10.

Ida reddened. —Malamud, p. 34.

Her sleep suffered. —Malamud, p. 147.

She blushed under her clothes. —Malamud, p. 15.

The nothingness continued. —Tennessee Williams, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, p.

147.

Autos honked. Trees rustled. People passed. Arnie went out. —Langston Hughes, The Ways of White
Folks, p. 155.

Term dragged on. —Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning: An Autobiography, p.

113.
It came up. It came on. —Brian Moore, The Emperor of Ice-Cream, p. 249.

Harmony settled over the kitchen. —Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself, p. 127.

Whiskey came first.

—Bernard De Voto, The Hour, p. 1.

Blame rests always. —Janet Frame, Scented Gardens for the Blind, p. 26.

They turned as one. —Mark Van Doren, "Not a Natural Man,,f Collected Stories, Vol. I, p. 124.

It began so unrecognizably. —John Wyndham, Out of the Deep, p. 6.

A face looked in the spy-hole. —Brendan Behan, Confessions of an Irish Rebel, p. 11.

The cancer came sooner. —Iris Murdoch, An Unofficial Rose, p. 7.

They exulted in her speed. —Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock, p. 300.

A humidifier steamed at her feet. —J. F. Powers, Morte d'Urban, p. 116.

The train chuffed round a curve. —John Wain, A Travelling Woman, p. 142.

He will enter upon his immortality. —Robert Penn Warren, Flood, p. 57.

These poets rose to the occasion. —Jack Lindsay, Meetings with Poets, p. 236.

Curiosity was growing inside him like the cancer. —Graham Greene, A Sense of Reality, p. 61.

The clouds were sitting on the land. —William Golding, Lord of the Flies, p. 70.

The ululation spread from shore to shore. —Golding, p. 244.

Time stretched on, indifferently. —William Golding, Pincher Martin, p. 182.

His mind brimmed with speculation. —Thornton Wilder, The Cabala, p. 10.

The orderlies were cowering in a ditch. —George Steiner, Anno Domini, p. 15.

TYPE 4: THE TRANSITIVE PATTERN, EXAMPLES

The first four transitive samples have what might be called minimal direct objects, personal pronouns
that convey no new information but rather refer back to some person mentioned in a previous
sentence. Thus, the main emphasis remains on the verb:
The room alarmed him. —Brian Moore, The Luck of Ginger Coffey, p. 182.

Slaughter paid her. —William Goldman, Soldier in the Rain, p. 80.

Everybody hated her. —John Updike, "The Alligators " dinger Stories, p. 10.

The notion titillated him. —Leslie Fiedler, The Last Jew in America, p. 71.

In the next group of samples, the focus shifts to the noun phrase that is the direct object, in final
position:

Some men were chewing their fingernails. —Lin Yutang, The Flight of the Innocents, p. 300.

Matter dominates Mind. —Jacques Barzun, Classic, Romantic and Modern, p. 108.

His mind bred vermin. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p.

Marlborough swallowed the bait. —Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud, p. 63.

They exalted the sacraments. . . —Austin Warren, Richard Crashaw, A Study in Baroque Sen- sibility, p. 7.

Her eyes bleed tears; His wounds weep blood. —Warren, p. 156.

Veterans send ball-point pens. Banks send memo books. —E. B. White, The Points of My Compass, p.

That meant ash; ash meant burning; burning must mean cigarettes. —Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim, p. 64.

We have our destinies. No man knows what. —Archibald MacLeish, A Time to Speak, p. 156.

In the final group of transitive samples, an adverb or a prepositional phrase occupies the terminal slot
and thus comes in for a strong share of attention:

She changed the subject immediately. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 143.

Helen crushed the child into her arms. —William Styron, Lie Down in Darkness, p. 30.

They peel the morning like a fruit. —Lawrence Durrell, Justine, p. 215.

Bondage gives place to liberty. . . . —Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, p.

Life struck her across the face. . . . —Alan Paton, Too Late the Phalarope, p. 106.
The Omission of Conjunctions

The streets were empty, the slates shone purple. —Sean OTaolain, I Remember! I Remember!, p. 18.

The fog had all gone, the wind had risen. —C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, p. 175.

"You give me calm, I give you happiness."

—Angus Wilson, The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot, p. 434.

He did not waste time maturing, he did not make any of the obvious

mistakes. —Saul Bellow, Dangling Man, p. 87.

The sun was up, the farm was alive. —Evelyn Waughy The End of the Battle, p. 258.

We need the weather and the wind, we must wait upon these things, we are dependent on them. —
Harry Berger, Jr., The Allegorical Temper, p. 240.

Mind and body do not act upon each other, because they are not

each other, they are one. —Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, p. 176.

The highest good exists, it is unified, it is perfect, it is God. —Irwin Edman, "IntroductionThe Consolation
of Philoso- phy, p. xiv.

Quite often, as is true of these, whether in groups of two or three or

more, such clauses are kernel clauses. Minimal utterance seems to invite

minimal connection. Here three abutting clauses appear alongside separate

kernels and near-kernels:

We beguile. We make apologies and protestations. We wonder, we

surmise, we conjecture.

We weave a daisy chain. —Huntington Brown, Prose Styles: Five Primary Types, p. 81.