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INTRODUCTION
Linguistic research results of XX-XXI centuries suggest that after analysing an extensive bulk of the factual language material, the majority of linguists have provided their own ways to look at topical grammatical phenomena as well as substantiated some of their classifications. The study of complex sentences is intrinsically pertinent to those issues as it focuses on a polyfunctional language unit that integrates a whole spectrum of syntactical, semantical, and communicative features. Based on these assumptions we've chosen the topic of our course paper which sounds as follows: “Complex sentences in modern English”.
Theoretical foundation of the paper was formed by such scholars as Celce-Murcia М., Larsen-Freeman D., Chalker S., Collins, Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. A, F. Bowers, and Blokh M.Y. Some other linguists who studied complex sentences were Dwight Bolinger, David Brazil, David Crystal, George Oliver Curme, Renaat Declerck, Alfred C. Gimson, Michael Alexander, Kirkwood Halliday, Jacobs R. A.
The topicality of this paper deals with the necessity of finding new approaches to the analysis of complex sentences used in literary works due to their large variety and due to the ways of author's creative usage of them.
The objective of the work is describing and specifying different types of complex sentences, their characteristics and the way they function in modern English.
To achieve this aim we should fulfil the following tasks:
1) to give a survey of the most important aspects of the complex sentence as polypredicative structure;
2) to analyze and systematize different types of complex sentences;
3) to research the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O' Henry in regard to the syntactic characteristics of complex sentences;
4) to identify main features typical of O' Henry's complex sentences which pertain to his style of writing.
The object under study is the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O.Henry, and the subject of the present thesis can be defined as the syntactic peculiarities of complex sentences in this literary work.
In the course paper the following methods were employed: the method of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, the literary method, the descriptive, comparative, and structural approaches.
The research is by and large theoretical, analytical and descriptive in its nature. The procedure of data analysis is based on close reading and text analysis.
The significance of the study. This research would be of great practical importance to those who have interest in syntax of modern English, especially complex sentence structures. The paper may provide a valuable insight into the ways of analysing different sentence structures in terms of the kind and the number of clauses involved and the way they are connected.
The scientific novelty of the paper deals with the systematization of different syntactical phenomena pertaining to complex sentences. Also, very little research has been done so far regarding complex sentence structure analysis of O' Henry's literary works. Therefore, this thesis is intended to address those concerns and fill the gaps mentioned above.
To start the paper a considerable attention has been given to the way of defying the notion of complex sentence and its place among other syntactic structures of modern English. A comprehensive typology of complex sentences was given in the second paragraph.
This classification will subsequently be used as a basis of the analysis of sample examples from O' Henry's stories in Chapter 2. A thorough consideration will be given to the peculiarities of subordinate clauses and the means of their connection.
From the structural point of view, the paper falls into two chapters:
1. The notion of complex sentence and its typology
2. Syntactic characteristics of complex sentences in the short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O.Henry.
The first chapter provides an extensive overview of the main theoretical aspects relating to the syntactic features of the complex sentences. In the first part it outlines the main classifications of sentences in modern English based on number of criteria, the communicative and the structural being the most important.
After thoroughly considering the types of sentences existent in English today, we narrow our focus down to the complex sentence only. In this respect, we analyse the status of principal and dependent clauses and explain the syntactical phenomenon of subordination.
Finally, we make an account of the connective means that join the clauses together, namely, conjunctional and non-conjunctional ones and classify them.
The entire second paragraph of the first chapter is dedicated to classifying subordinate clauses. It takes perspective on each of the five basic types of dependent clauses: subject, predicate, object, attributive and adverbial. Within these main groups there are also distinguished several subgroups.
In the second chapter we sustain all the theoretical statements posed in the first chapter and exemplify them using textual material from the short story “The Gift of the Magi” written by O' Henry.
The chapter starts off with the description of the writer's legacy with some scarce biographical facts included. Then there follows the analysis of O' Henry's writing style with a particular attention given to the structural characteristics of the sentences and the stylistic implications that they induce.
In the last part of the second chapter there is statistical data analysis presented in the form of pie-charts. We calculate the percentage of different sentence types and analyze how it effects the narration stylistically. And again, all the necessary examples to sustain our findings are fully provided.
The course paper consists of the introduction, two chapters, conclusions and the bibliography. The total number of pages is 55; the list of literature embraces 51 source.
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