complex sentence
1
3.5
- noun
- /ˈkɒmplɛks ˈsɛntəns/
- Specialized
:
oración compleja
- The teacher explained that a complex sentence has one main part and another that adds more detail.
- syntactically complex sentences
- long, complex sentence
- more complex sentences
Examples
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At older ages, Formulated Sentences requires children to create complex sentences using adverbs and conjunctions, such as before, or, until, and because.
Academic text (2015) -
The complex sentence opens Peter London's recent commentary about the role of spirituality in art education:
Academic text (2011) -
Now, Paul is capable of writing a complex sentence like that, but he just doesn't.
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At age 4, almost half of the children in their study responded that a character who heard the complex sentence would answer with their own knowledge
Academic text (2012) -
Long, grammatically complex sentences packed with lots of information slow your reader down.
Academic text (1993) -
A heptapod can write a complex sentence in two seconds, effortlessly.
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At the same age, the chart on language development showed children adding many new words to their vocabularies and learning to use complex sentences, such as those with adjective or conditional clauses.
Academic text (2014) -
As these internationally adopted children grow older and are expected to form these complex sentence structures to score well, weaknesses in expressive sentence formulation may emerge.
Academic text (2015) -
A complex sentence contains an independent clause and at least one dependent clause.
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When writing, it's important to include complex sentences to convey more nuanced ideas.
Antonyms
How Complex
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a sentence consisting of multiple clauses or parts' is directly and transparently derived from 'complex' (made of multiple interrelated parts) + 'sentence' (a grammatical unit). This compositional interpretation follows straightforward adjectival modification and is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand the MWE.
Etymology
Complex sentence comes from the picture of one main part with a smaller part attached, like a house with a big room and a little side room. So, it means 'a sentence that has one main clause and at least one subordinate clause'.