Both examples are harder to understand than necessary. Either “The firefighters who’d been sleeping jumped into action when the alarm sounded.” or “When the alarm sounded, the firefighters who’d been sleeping jumped into action.” seem much more understandable. The actual short version that flows would be “Then sleeping firefighters jumped into action when the alarm sounded.”
Long version: The problem I see with the examples of Hypotaxis and Parataxis might be that it is artificially chunking up the ideas involved into separate bits when it is unnecessary, and so the idea the sentence is trying to get across requires stitching it back together, distracting from the meaning.
Short version: The Hypotaxis and Parataxis examples are hard to understand because you have to stitch the ideas back together.
Which of those two explanations is easier to understand?
Bonus medium length explanation: The Hypotaxis and Parataxis examples are hard to understand because they artificially break up ideas which have to be put back together to make sense out of the sentence.
I think the medium length explanation is what happens when you try to make the long version make more sense without losing any meaning. The short explanation makes the most sense, but it does lose a little meaning. I think the long versions exist mostly because it is harder to due medium length, and the short ones exist people got tired of the long ones but still don’t want to go through all the effort of fixing them.
I know I could have written a much more concise and understandable version of this comment without losing any meaning, but I usually pick one of the two easy ways.
Both examples are harder to understand than necessary. Either “The firefighters who’d been sleeping jumped into action when the alarm sounded.” or “When the alarm sounded, the firefighters who’d been sleeping jumped into action.” seem much more understandable. The actual short version that flows would be “Then sleeping firefighters jumped into action when the alarm sounded.”
Long version: The problem I see with the examples of Hypotaxis and Parataxis might be that it is artificially chunking up the ideas involved into separate bits when it is unnecessary, and so the idea the sentence is trying to get across requires stitching it back together, distracting from the meaning.
Short version: The Hypotaxis and Parataxis examples are hard to understand because you have to stitch the ideas back together.
Which of those two explanations is easier to understand?
Bonus medium length explanation: The Hypotaxis and Parataxis examples are hard to understand because they artificially break up ideas which have to be put back together to make sense out of the sentence.
I think the medium length explanation is what happens when you try to make the long version make more sense without losing any meaning. The short explanation makes the most sense, but it does lose a little meaning. I think the long versions exist mostly because it is harder to due medium length, and the short ones exist people got tired of the long ones but still don’t want to go through all the effort of fixing them.
I know I could have written a much more concise and understandable version of this comment without losing any meaning, but I usually pick one of the two easy ways.