Hypotaxe: emphasize the effect of a text

What the hypotax is and what kind of effect it generally produces in a text can be understood with a little grammatical explanation.

What is the hypotaxe

• The hypotax is a particularly noticeable sentence structure in the form of a sentence structure, i.e. a sentence that consists of several parts. Tapeworm sentences are a typical example of paratax, which consists of very long and nested sentences. Specifically, the hypotax is a sentence with many main and subordinate clauses in one sentence.
• You can recognize the hypotax from the fact that there are a lot of commas between two points in a sentence and several subordinate clauses are often artfully integrated. The conjunctions, that is, connecting words such as "Weil", "Also", are clear indications of a hypotactic text structure.
• By the way, the clear opposite is the paratax, which only consists of very short and simple main clauses.

The effect of such sentences

• In general, the hypotax is a typical stylistic device for literary, artistic texts. You can always tell that there is a certain game of play with the language and a conscious design with regard to style.


How to use paratax and hypotax correctly - what you should know about the terms

When interpreting it is not only necessary to understand the content of the text, ...

• However, the hypotax has no effect of its own, but you always have to interpret it in relation to the respective text.
• The hypotax is of course much less factual and also more difficult to understand compared to the clear, briefly bundled paratax.
• This is where feelings and more complex thoughts come into their own.
• It is therefore mainly used to express complex, often argumentatively demanding trains of thought and is considered an indication of expressiveness and the will to style. Hypotaxe often looks a bit old-fashioned.