Teachers and writers who think about these things tell us that our thoughts take shape in the sentences we write. Language, or to be more precise, expository prose, is constructed, and if that is true, then the more knowledgeable we are about grammar and sentence structure, the more facility we can command in finding the write form to communicate our thinking to someone else—even in the more common of circumstances.
In a café the other day, and amidst these fraught political times, I happened to hear this casual remark, said extemporaneously, between friends over coffee: We disagree about a lot of things, but we never forget that in the end we’re human beings together here, which is the reason that we stay friends through it all. Fine philosophy and grammar both, but the former seems to be simpler than the latter, because that one sentence of thirty-one words lays down a number of thoughts on different levels, some asserting themselves independently, and others taking their stand in connection with what the independents have said. How does this all work compositionally?
Textbooks typically classify sentences according to their structure into four groups (though some will say that three suffice, the fourth being a variation on the third): simple, compound, complex, and compound–complex. Sentences of any type are composed of clauses, and clauses are either independent or subordinate. A simple sentence has one independent clause, a compound two or more; a complex sentence has one independent clause and one or more subordinates, and a compound-complex has two or more independent clauses and one or more subordinates. Arranged in this order, we can see that each of the types burgeons forth in greater intricacy—grammatically, logically, and rhetorically—than the one before it.
Our sentence from the café is an example of the last type, a compound-complex of two independent clauses (we disagree and we never forget) and three subordinates (that we’re, which is, and that we stay). Enunciations like this have a reason for their complexity, and it often lies in an effort to connect the logic between two (and ultimately among all) the clauses in one sustained sweep. The speaker begins by acknowledging respectfully the differing conclusions his friend frequently comes to, but no sooner does he do this than in the next independent assertion, he precludes by qualification what too often happens in such heated debates: unlike others, we never forget what cannot ever be realistically denied, that he and his friend are ultimately human beings together in the world. Two dominant assertions thus open the statement. The subordinate clause in which his point then completes itself is unavoidable, because the independent clause on which it depends (we never forget), with its verb denoting some notion of thinking, triggers what is called indirect statement, where the object of the thought assumes the form of a subordinate clause.
That, however, is not the case with the next subordinate structure, which is the reason. By letting his remark elaborate into a compound-complex sentence, such is the conviction of the speaker that he ties the idea of friendship tightly with what has preceded in order to stress the downright value it has for him; and he reinforces this importance, and its proven strength as well, with the concluding prepositional phrase through it all. The last of the subordinates clauses, that we stay, makes the reason explicit, its verb stay a warmer but more emphatic assertion than had he written we are or even we remain.
That complex grammatical structure, remember, arose simply and spontaneously in conversation, and it reveals someone able and at ease in both comprehending and presenting the interrelationship of the ideas he holds. All of us do this at times when conviction prevails strongly enough, but analyzing the linguistic structure as we have just done here helps us more naturally marshal such forms when we need to, especially when we write, where the living moment in all its quickness is one step removed. The complexity of the sentence structure successfully embodies the mind’s intricacy, and the result is a truer representation of one’s thoughts and sentiments—all to the end, let us hope, of a better understanding among all us humans.
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