Sentence period
The period ( Greek περίοδος periodos "handling", "cycle") is in rhetoric and style a complex sentence structure hypotactically built from several sub-clauses . In ancient rhetoric, the period was divided into syntactically independent kola , the kola in turn in commas . Today the sentence period is divided into partial clauses, with main and subordinate clauses being distinguished. Beyond the grammatical structure, a decisive characteristic of the period was that its construction and the linguistic rhythm formed the artful and appropriate form of a closed unit of meaning. Aristotle defined the period as
"A thought that in and of itself has a beginning and an end and a clearly visible scope."
In addition to the unity of meaning, clarity, concinnity , balance and sound were necessary conditions of the period to be fulfilled.
The simple period is two-part and consists of two main clauses or a main clause and a subordinate clause, whereby the antecedent ( protasis ) creates tension, which the subsequent clause ( apodosis ) releases. This basic form often follows syntactic patterns of the form "how ... so ...", "although ... but ...", "if ... then ..." etc. If further sub-clauses are incorporated into this basic form, the compound period arises , whereby one differentiates whether the Main clause is at the beginning ( decreasing period ), or whether the period is composed towards the end, where the central point in the main clause is formulated ( increasing period ). This more common form also corresponds more to the ancient understanding, which corresponds to the origin of the word "cycle", according to which only the last, final part closes the circle and until then the thought execution is not complete.
Finally, one speaks of a historical period , in the case of a sentence structure that captures an event in all circumstances and details to be reported, and of oratorical period ( Latin orator 'speaker' ) in structures or groups of sentences that unite a thought in all aspects summarized.
The masters of the artistic period in antiquity were mainly Cicero and in German Thomas Mann and Heinrich von Kleist . The following example comes from his Michael Kohlhaas :
“From this point of view, with complete freedom of view, I had hardly seen the gentlemen and the woman who was sitting on the stool in front of them and seemed to be scribbling something: then she suddenly stood leaning on her crutches, looking around at the people , on; watch me, who never exchanged a word with her, nor coveted her science for as long as his life; pushes himself up to me through the whole crowd of people and says: ›there! if the Lord wants to know, he may ask you about it!
A distinction must be made between the period in rhetoric and the concept of the metrical period in verse, which is derived from it .
literature
- Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature. 8th edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-520-84601-3 , p. 601.
