Hello all,


I am a Native English speaker from the United States. I have stumbled on this book, Words on Words: A Dictionary for Writers and Others who Care about Words by the late John Brenner, a couple of years ago at the library of my alma mater: Florida Atlantic University. In a section of his book, he classifies five types of the sentences(the four we know): simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, and complex-complex sentence. That being said, I am happy to say that I now own a copy of the book, Words on Words written by the late John B. Bremner, which was extremely extremely affordable. I love his entry on sentences that I have decided to put the whole thing(including complex-complex sentence) here and see what you think of it. I do believe that the late John Bremner has a very compelling case in introducing a complex-complex sentence. I say this because I have seen evidences of these types of sentences in books. I have always wanted to construct sentences like these. It is good to know that there is a name for such construction. It is safe to say that John Bremner was the only one(so far) to have identified it, describe it and put it in his book. Almost all grammarians and linguists are not aware of this sentence construction or type. I can attest to that. Also, it does shed light on the fact that there is so much to learn about the grammar of the English language or any languages for that matter. I love it!!!



Sentences

A sentence is a grammatical unit that conveys a complete thought and contains a subject and a predicate, either or both of which may be understated but understood. Sentences are principally classified as simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, complex-complex. Thus:


-A simple sentence consists of one independent clause: "He knows almost nothing."


-A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses connected by a coordinating conjunction: "He knows almost nothing and he doesn't want to study." and "He knows almost nothing and he doesn't want to study but he may change."


-A complex sentence consists of an independent clause and one or more dependent clauses: "He knows almost nothing because he refuses to study." and "Because he refuses to study, he doesn't know he should."


-A compound-complex sentence consists of two or independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses: "He knows that he should study but he doesn't want to." and "He knows that he should study but he doesn't think that he has a chance of passing."


-A complex-complex sentence consists of an independent clause and a dependent clause that is subordinate to another dependent clause: "He got mad when I told him that he should study."




Before I had this book in my possession, I attempted to create a complex-complex sentence and here is what I came up with: "Now, the popular kids were pursuing those that once pursued them that they had rejected in the past."


I ran this sentence by people who are grammar experts like you, Nancy Sullivan, who is the author of Essential Grammar, who said that the second dependent clause of my sentence"that they had rejected in the past" was awkward because she was trying to figure out which clause it was modifying. She created her own version: "Now, the boy was buying cars that needed parts that were difficult to find."
And Diane Larsen-Freeman, who is one of the co-authors of the book, The Grammar Book. She too constructed her on her own complex-complex sentence: "The thief stole the car that was parked near the stadium where the World Series is being played.
I also another example of a complex-complex sentence from another forum: "The man who saw the horse that was grazing in the field was sitting on the fence that enclosed the farm."


I want to know what you think of this and is it possible for you to create your own complex-complex sentence based on your understanding of it?


What about variations of a complex-complex sentence based on the definition of a complex-complex sentence(thanks to John Brenner)?:

-Independent clause with multiple dependent clauses subordinate to another dependent clause

-Independent clause with dependent clause subordinate to other multiple dependent clauses

-Independent clause with multiple dependent clauses subordinate to their own dependent clause

-Independent clause with multiple dependent clauses subordinate to their own dependent clauses

Diane Larsen-Freeman did mentioned that Nancy Sullivan's sentence contains two relative clauses in a row. How about a complex-complex sentence containing?:

-two noun clauses in a row(noun clause + noun clause)

-two adverbial clauses in a row(adverbial clause + adverbial clause)

-a relative clause and a noun clause(relative clause + noun clause)

-a noun clause and an adverbial clause(noun clause + adverbial clause)

-an adverbial and a relative clause(adverbial clause + relative clause)



What about a complex-complex in the interrogative, imperative, and exclamative?


Also, what would a compound-compound sentence look like?

By the way, speaking of sentences, is sentence "type" associated with structure(simple, compound, complex, etc)? Is sentence "kind" associated with purpose(declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamative, etc)? Or can both "type" and "kind" be used interchangeably? There is some confusing with that.

Sorry for the barrage of questions! I just love sentences. Also, feel free to share this with other people.

Let me know what you think.


Thank You,
Caleb Joseph

I think that the reason no one has identified Complex-Complex is. The fact that your examples are very poorly written. Well, for the way that I was taught to write. I was told you think about a person saying the words out loud and that will create your sentence structure. Your sentences are long and very fast-paced not sure if that was the goal, but it seems wrong to me. Like this sentence here. "He knows almost nothing and he doesn't want to study but he may change.". Would it not be better if it was more like "He knows almost nothing, he doesn't want to study but he still may change!".
I could be Wrong

Traditional grammar classifies sentences as simple, complex and compound. But this scheme conflates two separate dimensions: the presence or absence of embedding, and the presence or absence of coordination. Consider:

(1) 'Jill seems quite friendly'.
(2) 'I think Jill seems quite friendly'.
(3) 'Jill seems quite friendly but her husband is extremely shy'.
(4) 'I think Jill seems quite friendly but her husband is extremely shy'.

(Note that in (4) there is both embedding and coordination.)

We can distinguish (1) and (2) from (3) as non-compound (or clausal) vs compound (a coordination of clauses); (1)-(2) could then be distinguished as simple vs complex clauses but no great significance attaches to this latter distinction.

The crucial point is that sentences are more productively categorised into "type":

Declarative (You are very tactful)
Exclamative (How tactful you are!)
Imperative (Be very tactful)
Interrogative (Open: How tactful are you? ~ Closed: Are you very tactful?)

Within those categories there are a number of sub-types such as main, subordinate, finite (content, relative and comparative), non-finite (infinitival, gerund-participial, past participial) and so on.



PaulM

Hello alcapone2099,

Those sentences are not mine. Those were taking from the book that I have mentioned. I don't agree with you; I think those sentences are well-constructed. I am curious, where did you learn your grammar? It is not an insult but a question. By the way, I do believe that not all grammarians agree on every grammar topics, so there is bound to be confusions on the learners.

Hello Paul,

Thank you for responding. I see what you mean. Grammar can be very confusing with all the different clashing of terms that exist. Also, there are disagreements among grammarians or grammar experts about usages and definitions. So it is difficult to know who are correct on these points. That has somewhat been my struggle on this. Well, that is a part of learning.



Thank you
Caleb

Hello alcapone2099,

I forgot to mention that the late John Bremner had forgotten to put commas around the coordinating conjunctions in the compound sentence examples and compound-complex sentence examples. I do not know if he did that intentionally or mistakenly.