[Corpora-List] max sentence legnths

[Krishnamurthy, Ramesh]

I agree. A grammatical sentence can be of unlimited length. Classical Sanskrit prose works (eg Baana's Harshacharita, c. 7th C AD) often use innumerable case-related clause elements (appositional nominatives; ablative absolutes; instrumentals, datives, locatives, in various functions etc) in lengthy descriptions, which grammatically constitute a single sentence, and run over several pages.
Best
Ramesh Krishnamurthy
Lecturer in English Studies, School of Languages and Social Sciences,
Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812 ; Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766 [Room NX08, 10th
Floor, North Wing of Main Building]
http://www.aston.ac.uk/lss/school/staff/krishnamurthyr.jsp
Director, ACORN (Aston Corpus Network project): http://acorn.aston.ac.uk/
________________________________
From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of Stefan Frazier
Sent: 19 July 2008 07:48
To: Cyril Belica
Cc: corpora at uib.no
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] max sentence legnths

I realize this thread played out some time ago. But Dürrenmatt's "Der Auftrag" with its 24 sentences in 133 pages certainly benefits from the way German sentences may be constructed, in conventional grammatical form, in a manner English would consider "comma splices." In other words, a full clause may end, another clause may begin, a comma separates those two, the narrative continues apace, the woman travels to an unnamed Arabic-speaking country, she solves a murder case, the woman encounters deep philosophical issues, one can see that in this way it is quite easy indeed to construct long sentences, we should remember that there is a difference between "grammatical" and what is considered "correct," it is late, I am going to bed.

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Cyril Belica <belica at ids-mannheim.de<mailto:belica at ids-mannheim.de>> wrote:
> Do any of those 24 sentences take advantage of the potential
> of German syntax to postpone any verb more than one page later
> than the subject?
>
> John Sowa
I don't think so though I've never checked that out. But sure enough, it is
a syntax-heavy diet of reading.

Best,
Cyril




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Stefan Frazier
Linguistics & Language Development
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