When discussing simple sentences we had to deal with communication types: declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences. With compound sentences this problem requires special treatment. If both (or all) clauses making up a compound sentence belong to the same communication type it is clear that the compound sentence belongs to this type, too. But there are also compound sentences consisting of clauses belonging to different communication types. In that case it is impossible to state to what type the compound sentence as a whole belongs. Let us consider a few instances of this kind.

At the beginning of the syntactical part of this book we commented briefly on the problem of classifying composite sentences. We will adopt as a first principle of classification the way in which the parts of a composite sentence (its clauses) are joined together. This may be achieved either by means of special words designed for this function, or without the help of such words. In the first case, the method of joining the clauses is syndetic, and the composite sentence itself may be called syndetic. In the second case the method of joining the clauses is asyndetic, and so is the composite sentence itself.

Another type of secondary predication may be seen in the so-called absolute construction. This appears, for instance, in the following example: Only when his eyes at last met her own. . . was he reassured that for her what had happened had simply happened. She was prepared, the situation already falling gracefully into place about her, to consider it, incredibly enough he thought, as no more than that. (BUECHNER) Here the phrase the situation already falling gracefully into place about her constitutes an absolute construction. 2 The absolute construction is of course a case of secondary predication, or, in Jespersen's terminology, a nexus. The participle falling, which denotes an action performed by the thing denoted by the noun situation, is not a predicate, and situation is not the subject either of a sentence or of a clause. This is evidence that the predication contained in the phrase is a secondary one.

Another syntactical phenomenon which is best, considered under this heading of transition to the composite sentence is based on what is very aptly termed "secondary predication". Before starting to discuss the syntactical phenomena involved, we shall therefore have to explain briefly what is meant by secondary predication.

Under this head we will consider some phenomena which clearly overstep the limits of the simple 'sentence and tend towards the complex sentence, but which lack an essential feature of a complex sentence. Some of these phenomena are common to English, Russian, and other languages, while some of them are typical of English alone.

By homogeneous parts of a sentence we mean parts of the same category (two or more subjects, two or more predicates, two or more objects, etc.), standing in the same relation to other parts of the sentence (for homogeneous secondary parts we should say: standing in the same relation to the same head word). According to the older terminology, such sentences used to be termed "contracted sentences", as if they had been "contracted" put of two or more simple sentences. For example, the sentence I met my relatives and friends would be said to have been "contracted" out of two sentences: I met my relatives, and I met my friends. This treatment does not seem to be justified, as it introduces a sort of historical element, implying the origin of such sentences, which is both doubtful and completely irrelevant for the study of these sentences as they exist in the modern language.

Though the notions of simple sentence and composite sentence seem to be well defined and distinctly opposed to each other, this does not mean that there are no transitional elements between them. As in so many other cases, in the sphere of sentence types we find a considerable number of phenomena which, though not exactly transgressing the limits of the simple sentence, do not quite fit into it, and show some peculiarities which justify our treating them as transitional between the simple and the composite sentence.

By "elliptical sentences" we mean sentences with one or more of their parts left out, which can be unambiguously inferred from the context. We will apply this term to any sentence of this kind, no matter what part or parts of it have been left out.

Besides the types of sentence considered so far, which are more or less universally recognised, there are some types which are often passed over in silence, but which deserve special attention. We will here dwell on a type of sentence belonging to this category, namely, infinitive sentences.

We have agreed to term one-member sentences those sentences which have no separate subject and predicate but one main part only instead