3. The arbitrary measures of Charles I, the bold schemes of Strafford, and the intolerant bigotry of Laud, precipitated a collision between the opposite principles of government, and divided the whole country into Cavaliers and Roundheads.—May.
Both the subject and the predicate are compound. Each of the three nouns in the compound subject has modifiers. The two verbs in the compound predicate have each a complement, and the second has an adverbial modifier (a phrase).
4. Twenty of the savages now got on board and proceeded to ramble over every part of the deck and scramble about among the rigging, making themselves much at home and examining every article with great inquisitiveness.—Poe.
The predicate is compound. The sentence is extended by the use of participles (making and examining), which modify the simple subject twenty.
- 5. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage.—Lamb.
- 6. The mermaid was still seen to glide along the waters, and mingling her voice with the sighing breeze, was often heard to sing of subterranean wonders, or to chant prophecies of future events.—Scott.
- 7. With early dawn, they were under arms, and, without waiting for the movement of the Spaniards, poured into the city and attacked them in their own quarters.—Prescott.
- 8. Arming a desperate troop of slaves and gladiators, he overpowered the feeble guard of the domestic tranquillity of Rome, received the homage of the Senate, and, assuming the title of Augustus, precariously reigned during a tumult of twenty-eight days.—Gibbon.
Note. A simple sentence with compound predicate often differs very slightly from a compound sentence. Thus in examples 4–7 the insertion of a single pronoun (they, she) to serve as a subject for the second verb (proceeded, browsed, etc.) will make the sentence compound.
COMPOUND AND COMPLEX SENTENCES
510. Every sentence that is not simple must be either compound or complex.
A sentence is compound if it consists of two or more independent clauses; complex, if it consists of one independent (main) clause and one or more subordinate clauses.
511. An ordinary compound sentence consists of two or more coördinate simple clauses.