without hurting
the idiomatic flow of the sentence. _The mayor is going to deliver a
speech_ is a perfectly intelligible proposition. But further than this
we cannot go in the process of reduction. We cannot say, for instance,
_Mayor is going to deliver_.[8] The reduced sentence resolves itself
into the subject of discourse--_the mayor_--and the predicate--_is going
to deliver a speech_. It is customary to say that the true subject of
such a sentence is _mayor_, the true predicate _is going_ or even _is_,
the other elements being strictly subordinate. Such an analysis,
however, is purely schematic and is without psychological value. It is
much better frankly to recognize the fact that either or both of the two
terms of the sentence-proposition may be incapable of expression in the
form of single words. There are languages that can convey all that is
conveyed by _The-mayor is-going-to-deliver-a-speech_ in two words, a
subject word and a predicate word, but English is not so highly
synthetic. The point that we are really making here is that underlying
the finished sentence is a living sentence type, of fixed formal
characteristics. These fixed types or actual sentence-groundworks may be
freely overlaid by such additional matter as the speaker or writer cares
to put on, but they are themselves as rigidly "given" by tradition as
are the radical and grammatical elements abstracted from the finished
word. New words may be consciously created from these fundamental
elements on the analogy of old ones, but hardly new types of words. In
the same way new sentences are being constantly created, but always on
strictly traditional lines. The enlarged sentence, however, allows as a
rule of considerable freedom in the handling of what may be called
"unessential" parts. It is this margin of freedom which gives us the
opportunity of individual style.

[Footnote 7: "Coordinate sentences" like _I shall remain but you may go_
may only doubtfully be considered as truly unified predications, as true
sentences. They are sentences in a stylistic sense rather than from the
strictly formal linguistic standpoint. The orthography _I shall remain.
But you may go_ is as intrinsically justified as _I shall remain. Now
you may go_. The closer connection in sentiment between the first two
propositions has led to a conventional visual representation that must
not deceive the analytic spirit.]

[Footnote 8: Except, possibly, in a newspaper headline. Su