Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/202

188 no longer paratactic, but syntactic, with the result that the sign-post indicating this relation is necessarily placed at the beginning. This will be seen from a comparison of the paratactic and syntactic forms in the following pairs of examples:

Now in each of these sentences there are the same inducements to inversion in the syntactic form as in the paratactic; and added to these is the necessity for placing the sign-post at the beginning. We might expect, therefore, that inversion of syntactic clauses would be particularly common. But (i) We have already seen that inversion does not necessarily follow from the fact that the sign-post is placed at the beginning. And (ii) The verb in as and than clauses will probably, from the nature of the case, be the same as in the preceding clause. If it is in the same mood and tense, it can usually be omitted, unless effective repetition is required, in which case it will go to the end: a change of mood or tense, on the other hand, will often be marked by an auxiliary (itself perhaps compound), which again will usually preclude inversion.

The result is this:

i. Relative clauses, uninfluenced by the position of the sign-post, remain subject to precisely the same conditions as the corresponding paratactic sentences. Thus 'Among whom were...' is right, just as 'Among the guests were...' was right; 'Among which would I mention...' is of course impossible, because the subject does not carry the point; and 'To which may be attributed...' is right or wrong, according as the subject is or is not long enough to balance the compound verb.

ii. Inversion of an as or than clause, having become unusual for the reason mentioned above, is almost certain to look either archaic or clumsy; clumsy when the reason for it is apparent, archaic when it is not. The practical rule is