Our Conclusions:
First of all, we can note that the parallelisms referred to in task
F are revealed more precisely by the grammatical analysis and can be
seen to particularly extensive in S4. The fact that they sometimes involve
clauses with a speech report verb as predicator which has one or more
clausal objects stresses the social judgemental nature of what is being
described.
Secondly, we can see that Jane Austen's third and fourth sentences
are considerably more complex grammatically than any other sentence
in the three passages we have been examining. This fact is clearly a
large determinate of the feeling that her style is more complex than
the other writers we have been examining.
Another factor of the complexity is that she uses such a wide range
of sentence construction types compared with the other writers:
-
The overall structure of S1 is a compound listing structure, consisting
of two juxtaposed main clauses, with no co-ordinator to link them
together.
-
S2 is a simple sentence.
-
S3 is a compound linking structure, with its two main clauses
linked by 'and'. There is also grammatical complexity at the end
of the second clause, in the form of a relative clause acting as
a postmodifier inside the NP with 'report' as its head noun.
-
S4 is also a compound structure, this time involving four major
clauses and a combination of grammatical listing and linking. In
addition, each of these main clauses has grammatical complexity
within them, and a fair variety of kinds of nested/embedded clauses
are used: noun clauses, an adverbial clause and a relative clause.
This use of such a full range of the grammatical options available
supports the idea that her style is much more complex, rhetorical and
sophisticated (and somewhat more difficult to read and analyse, of course)
than the other two writers. But there are plenty of novelists with much
more complex styles - have a look at the novels of Henry James or William
Faulkner, if you don't believe us!
Back to task
G
