A MINDFUL GRAMMAR OF SENTENCE STYLE
Judy Lightfoot
Rationale: When grammar instruction is linked to writing style and
style is linked to mental moves, students learn grammar more naturally and
easily, and they apply it more readily to reading and writing.
The purpose of Sections I-VI* of this handout is
to enable writers to use Section VII, “Six Sentence Styles.” Writers who
learn these six syntactical structures along with principles of cohesion perceive
the interdependence of style and thought, read English prose with deeper
appreciation, and edit their own writing with greater skill and success.
(*Note: Sections I-VI are quoted and adapted from
Chapter 1 of Martha Kölln's Rhetorical Grammar, Macmillan, 1991
– a book that teaches grammar as an integral feature of thought.)
I. SENTENCES, COMPLETE AND INCOMPLETE:
A complete sentence says
something about something or someone. Find the complete sentences and the
fragments in the following excerpts from a speech to the Nigerian
court that Ken Saro-Wiwa made in 1995:
1. We all stand before history.
2. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people.
3. I have devoted my intellectual and material resources—my very
life—to a cause in which I have total belief.
4. Neither imprisonment nor death.
5. Can stop our ultimate victory.
6. I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause.
7. Regardless of the trials which I and those who believe with me may
encounter on our journey
8. All of us stand on trial, my lord, for by our actions.
9. We have denigrated our Country and jeopardized the future of our
children.
10. As we protect injustice and oppression.
11. We empty our classrooms, denigrate our hospitals, and fill our stomachs
with hunger.
12. Whether the scene here will be played and replayed by generations yet
unborn.
13. Depends on what the oppressor decides, what signals it sends out to the
waiting public.
14. In my innocence of the false charges I face here, in my utter conviction.
15. I call upon the Ogoni people and the oppressed ethnic minorities of Nigeria
to stand up now.
16. And fight fearlessly and peacefully for their rights. History is on their
side. God is on their side.
II. THE BINARY STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES:
Another way of describing an English
sentence is to say that it is based on a binary, or two-part, structure.
If you were asked to divide the complete sentences above into two parts,
where would the division fall in each? (Since a sentence says something about
someone or something, it will be logical to divide it into the someone
or something part and the about part.) When you find the two basic
parts or slots of every English sentence, you are finding the subject
and the predicate. The subject is the topic of the sentence; the predicate
is the comment made about the topic. This two-part or binary structure underlies
all sentences in English.
- One way of describing the subject of a sentence is to say it
is a noun in a group of words; a similar way to describe the predicate
is to say it is a verb in a group of words.
More specifically, a predicate consists of a main
verb with all words and phrases related to it (a phrase is a group
of words that acts as a unit and that lacks subject + verb). For each sentence
in the above list, underline the predicate once and its main verb twice. -
Similarly, a subject consists of a main noun with all the words
and phrases related to it. For each complete sentence in the above list,
underline the subject once and its main noun twice. (Quick self-check: if
it is a subject, you will be able to substitute a pronoun -- a word that
substitutes for a noun -- for the whole group of words, and the sentence will
still sound complete.)
Summary exercise: In each of the sentences provided by your
teacher, draw a vertical line between subject and predicate. Write "S" (for
"subject") above the main noun, and "V" above the main verb.
III. SENTENCE PATTERNS:
Every sentence has a subject and
a predicate. Every predicate has a main verb, often with one or more complements,
objects, or phrases attached. So the basic structure of the English sentence
can be summarized as S - V - C. The structure of a sentence
with a developed predicate looks like this:
Sentence
/
Subject | Predicate
\
Verb(s) Object(s) Optional phrase(s)
or
Verb(s) Complement(s) Optional clause(s)
Basic sentence structure can be classified into 3 patterns of slots according
to whether the verb is
(1) be or linking, (2) intransitive, or (3) transitive:
1. SUBJECT | BE or
LINKING VERBS | COMPLEMENT
Allan
| is
| in the English classroom.
Carl’s uncle |
was
| a soldier.
Breakfast
| tastes
| delicious.
Gill and I
| became
| close friends.
2. SUBJECT |
INTRANSITIVE VERB
The whole class | complained.
3. SUBJECT | TRANSITIVE VERB
| DIRECT OBJECT
Voyager 2 | photographed
| the rings of Saturn.
SUBJECT | TRANSITIVE
VERB | INDIRECT OBJECT | DIRECT OBJECT
The teacher | gave
| the class
| a test.
SUBJECT | TRANSITIVE VERB
| DIRECT OBJECT | COMPLEMENT
The class |
considered
| the test
| a drag.
The teacher | called
| the kids
| lazy.
The purpose of analyzing sentences into patterns is to help you see that
every sentence is a series of slots – that every basic sentence pattern
in English (like those above) has either two, three, or four basic slots.
The concept of slots will be useful when you look at sentence patterns available
to writers.
Optional slots: There are options that can appear inside
any basic slot. These are phrases and subordinate or dependent
clauses. They must appear in an optional slot near enough to the slot
containing the words they modify.
Exercise: To the above sentence patterns, add the following optional
adverb phrases and clauses: during the war; when she announced
the assignment; quite hastily; on its last journey in space; earlier today.
(An adverb is a word that modifies a verb. We regularly
add adverbial information--about time, place, manner, reason--to sentences.
A clause is a group of words acting as a unit and containing subject
+ verb; a main or independent clause can stand alone as if it were
a complete sentence; a subordinate or dependent clause cannot stand
alone and would make an incomplete sentence or fragment).
Review exercise: In sentences provided by your teacher, draw vertical
lines between slots, then identify the pattern.
Strategies: locate the
main verb first, and find the subject slot by mentally substituting a pronoun
for the whole thing. Note that optional phrases may occupy opening and closing
slots in the sentence. Accurately identify all subjects and verbs, but don't
agonize over whether something is a complement, object, or optional phrase
or clause.
Goal: to develop your
sense that every sentence is a series of slots.
IV. THE STRUCTURE OF A LONG ENGLISH SENTENCE:
As discussed above, the predicate
has a main verb, often with complements, objects, and/or optional words,
phrases, and clauses. The subject has a main noun or pronoun, also often
with one or more optional phrases or dependent clauses attached to it. Many
of these phrases and clauses will be adjectival. (An adjective is
a word that modifies a noun by telling who, which, or what kind of thing it
is.)
So the structure of a long sentence
in English will look rather like this:
Sentence
/
Subject | Predicate
/
\
NOUN + adj phrase + SC (subordinate clause) | VERB + adv phrase
+ SC
or
Adv phrase + NOUN + SC | adv phrase + VERB + SC + phrase
Summary exercise: In each of the sentences in the following paragraph,
underline the main clause (MC), put a vertical line between subject
and predicate of each main clause, and put parentheses around every phrase
and subordinate clause (SC). For every clause (both MC and SC), mark
an "S" above the subject and a "V" above the verb. Mark adjective
phrases and clauses "adj" and adverb phrases and clauses "adv."
How is Mr. Rushdie holding up after six years in hiding? What
kind of story is the world's most famous living author, in this extraordinary
situation, going to tell us and, of course, himself? Is this another
book that will give offense, and to whom? Will this book comment, directly
or otherwise, on the dogma-driven expansion of censorship and persecution
affecting writers in so many parts of the world? When we've worked
through this vanguard of questions we may be free to ask how his novel compares
with all the novels it competes with --serious novels whose ambitions are
to show us what we urgently need to know or feel in this threatening moment,
when alarms and grim forewarnings crowd in on us, making so many of our innocent
pastimes feel difficult to justify, fiction reading itself not excepted.
It turns out that the topical questions are easily answered; and it turns
out, also, that this novel, looked at as a work of literary art, is a triumph,
an intricate and deceptive one. The pages themselves are evidence that Mr.
Rushdie is in good creative health, his imaginative powers undamaged.
—Norman Rush, NYT
Book Review, 1/14/96, p. 7.
Note: When you can more or less accurately analyze the structure of
every sentence that you read or write by marking in this way, and when you
can add the skill of marking conjunctions, prepositional phrases, verbal phrases,
noun clauses, adjective clauses, and adverbial clauses (see your handbook
and the vocabulary list in the Appendix), you will have achieved basic competence
in identifying major elements of English sentence structure. Your goals
in doing this work are two: (1) to develop your ability to work with
your own and classmates' sentences to sharpen meaning by revising for cohesion
and best emphasis; (2) to develop your understanding and ability to discuss
the style of any piece of writing.
V. PUNCTUATION AND SENTENCE PATTERNS:
The concept that every sentence
is a series of slots will help make some conventions of punctuation more
meaningful, especially this one: Do not put single commas between the
structural slots. That is,
- never separate the subject from the verb
- never separate the direct object from the complement
- never separate the indirect object from the direct object
- never separate the verb from the complement
- and, with one exception*, never separate the verb from the direct
object.
*The one exception to this rule occurs when the direct object is
a quotation following a verb like say: *He said, "I love you." Here punctuation
conventions require a comma before the quoted words.
However, in the following sentences there is no place for commas:
- The images and information sent back by Voyager 2 have given space
scientists here on Earth enough data regarding distant planets to keep them
busy for years to come.
- The discussion groups during Orientation Weekend were extremely helpful
for incoming freshmen.
- The sportswriter considered the game between the Trojans and the Huskies
one of the truly great games of the current season.
You may want to add optional phrases and clauses to the above sentences.
If you do, they will be set off by pairs of commas. But the above rule
still applies: there are no single commas between slots.
- The images and information sent back by Voyager 2, the most recent
space vehicle sent up by NASA, have given space scientists here on Earth
enough data regarding distant planets to keep them busy for years to come.
- Discussion groups during Orientation Weekend proved, contrary to the
expectations of parents, to be extremely helpful for incoming freshmen.
- The sportswriter considered the game between the Trojans and the Huskies
one of the truly great games of the current season, regardless of the injuries
that kept two star players from completing the game. (Here the second comma
in the "pair" of commas is not needed because the sentence ends. When the
optional phrase appears at the start of the sentence, the first comma in the
"pair" of commas is unnecessary.)
VI. COHESION: THE "KNOWN-NEW CONTRACT":
Understanding the slots in sentence
patterns can be helpful in thinking about sentence cohesion, the ties
that connect each sentence or clause to what has gone before. In each
sentence or clause following a first one, an important tie is provided by
a restatement of information given to the reader in a preceding sentence or
clause. This known, or given, information generally fills the subject
slot in the sentence or clause that follows. The new information (the
real purpose of a following sentence or clause) generally comes in the predicate.
Consider, for example, how often the subject slot of a following sentence
is filled by a pronoun that refers to antecedent known to the reader from
a previously mentioned noun or noun phrase:
The President delivered his State of the Union message to a joint session
of Congress last night. He began by discussing the startling political changes
that took place in Eastern Europe as the 1980s ended. This diminishing of
the Cold War has greatly affected both our economic and our military policies.
The pronoun “he” in Sentence #2 ties it to Sentence #1; the antecedent of
“he” is “President.” Sentence #3 is connected to #2 by a noun phrase
in the subject slot whose information is not new; it's a restatement of the
preceding direct object. That is, “This diminishing of the Cold War” (#3)
refers to the same general events as “the startling political changes that
had been taking place in Eastern Europe as the 1980s ended” (#2) The topic
of #3’s opening phrase is marked as "known" by the use of the pronoun “this”
at the start of the phrase. Notice, too, that the new information in
#3 (as in #2) is in the predicate.
Linguists have found this known-new sequence to be so pervasive a feature
of prose that it is sometimes referred to as the "known-new contract."
The writer has an obligation, a contract of sorts, to fulfill a reader’s expectation
that each sentence or clause will be connected to what has gone before by
the inclusion of a known element.
The kinds of known information illustrated in the example--the [1] noun
or pronoun that refers back to a previous sentence slot, and [2] the
restatement of preceding information--are two of our strongest, most
common techniques for establishing cohesion. A third common technique
is [3] structural, as when the syntactical pattern of one clause is
matched by the pattern of the next one, or when a question is followed by
an answer. A fourth technique is the use of [4] transitions
-- words and phrases between clauses that define the relationship between
the clauses, such as later, on the other hand, similarly, in addition,
as a result, also, consequently, in fact, or that is.
Identify the different techniques of cohesion in the following passage
by underlining and labeling “known” and “new” elements in each
clause after the first one, and writing the number of the particular
technique of cohesion in the margin.
How is Mr. Rushdie holding up after six years in hiding? What kind
of story is the world's most famous living author, in this extraordinary situation,
going to tell us and, of course, himself? Is his newest book another
that will give offense, and to whom? Will this book comment, directly
or otherwise, on the dogma-driven expansion of censorship and persecution
affecting writers in so many parts of the world? When we've worked
through this vanguard of questions we may be free to ask how his novel compares
with all the novels it competes with—serious novels whose ambitions are to
show us what we urgently need to know or feel in this threatening moment,
when alarms and grim forewarnings crowd in on us, making so many of our innocent
pastimes feel difficult to justify, fiction reading itself not excepted.
It turns out that the topical questions are easily answered; and it turns
out, also, that this novel, looked at as a work of literary art, is a triumph,
an intricate and deceptive one. The pages themselves are evidence that Mr.
Rushdie is in good creative health, his imaginative powers undamaged.
VII: SIX SENTENCE STYLES:
“The medium is the message.”
A habitually loose style of writing suggests incoherence of thought and feeling
-- an inability to make connections or to discriminate between what is more
and less important. To improve coherence and emphasis in the thinking of
your papers, learn and practice these six sentence styles or structures:
1. LOOSE (MC + MC.)
2. PARALLEL (Cl//cl; phr//phr; word//word//word)
3. CUMULATIVE (MC + SC.)
4. PERIODIC (SC + MC.)
5. INVERTED (S-C-V; V-S-C; V-C-S; C-V-S; C-S-V)
6. INTERRUPTED (S-[interrupting phr/cl]-V-C; S-V-[interrupting phr/cl]-C)
However, a little learning is a dangerous thing! If you use
these structures to vary your syntax but pay insufficient attention to cohesion
and emphasis, you'll make your style even worse. So:
- Strive above all for clarity of thought.
- Practice the six structures until a range of syntactical options feels
natural.
- Read widely and notice how published writers use different sentence
structures.
- When you edit for sentence structure, focus on improving logical or
natural connections and creating emphasis on what is logically or emotionally
most important.
1. LOOSE syntax: Loose sentences are simple and compound sentences—main
clauses separated by coordinating conjunctions, semicolons, and periods:
MC + MC + MC + MC. This sentence style suggests that the ideas being
communicated are "separate but equal"-- they are relatively independent of
one another, and none is logically more important or emotionally more emphatic
than another. Every idea must be considered as having equal but separate
weight.
a. "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; oppressed people
must demand their freedom. We know this through painful experience."
b. "For years now I have heard the word 'wait.' It rings in the ear of every
Negro with a piercing familiarity. This 'wait' has almost always meant
'never.'" (Martin Luther King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail")
Questions are another form of loose style. They are of two
kinds: rhetorical questions (answers to which are obvious though left unsaid,
so that the question is really a statement or claim in a different form) and
real questions (which a writer explicitly answers in what follows them). Use
questions sparingly; the reader wants to be informed, not pestered.
a. "How do you know Macbeth is free to choose?"
b. "Why is it you never do anything right?"
c. "Why doesn’t someone let me in on it when the rules get changed?"
d. "What kind of thing can my Airedale, Drummer, have knowledge of?"
(Vicki Hearne, "What's Wrong With Animal Rights")
e. "Does happiness consist merely in pleasure or an absence of suffering?"
(Hearne)
Intentional fragments (also loose structures), are abbreviated
or incomplete thoughts that deliberately evoke the speaking voice. Like this.
Use fragments sparingly, or your reader may distrust your ability to form
complete thoughts.
a. "Unconditional praise and love. Are these signs of respect, or of
contempt?" (Hearne)
b. "I plot, I scheme. Snares, I think; tricks and traps." (Robert
Boynton, Introduction to the Short Story, 310)
c. "The painters are coming. Friends from Ottawa." (Boynton, 270)
2. PARALLEL structure: When ideas are equal in weight and closely
related, writers want to achieve greater power and clarity through compression,
conciseness -- the balancing of similar ideas or the creation of antithesis
between opposing ideas. Writers accomplish this by writing parallel ideas
in parallel (the same) grammatical form.
a. "We know through painful experience that {freedom is never voluntarily
given by the oppressor}; {it must be demanded by the oppressed}." {S+passive
verb+prepositional phr}//{S+passive verb+prepositional phr}
b. "We caught two bass, {hauling them in briskly as though they were mackerel},
{pulling them over the side of the boat in a businesslike manner without
any landing net}, and {stunning them with a blow on the back of the head}."
(E.B. White, "Once More to the Lake") {participial phr}//{participial
phr}//participial phr}
c. "The emblems of this are {the golden retriever rolling in the grass}, {the
horse with his nose deep in the oats}, {the kitty by the fire}." {noun
+ phr}//{noun + phr}//{noun+ phr} (Hearne)
3. CUMULATIVE structure: When ideas are unequal because one is logically
or emotionally more important than others, the cumulative sentence
is a good choice. Cumulative sentence structure is, roughly, MC + phr or
SC. That is, the main clause comes early, followed by an accumulation
of subordinate clauses and/or phrases. (Cumulative, loose, and parallel structures
are very common in English prose.)
a. "We demand more reasonableness out of characters in fiction than we demand
in real life, probably because we know that an author is in control
of what his characters do and therefore can provide the kind of order and
logic we would like to find in real life." (Boynton, p. 250)
b. "The stress we’ve put on point of view is unduly heavy unless its
importance can be proved." (Boynton, 250)
c. "This method is particularly effective if the author wants to keep
direct insight into his chief character at a minimum so that he’s revealed
primarily as he affects others--perhaps a neighborhood or a whole community--whose
direct reactions are presented."
d. "Aristotle associated happiness with ethics--codes of behavior that
urge us toward the sensation of getting it right, toward the kind of
work that yields the "click" of satisfaction upon solving a problem or surmounting
an obstacle." (Hearne)
4. PERIODIC structure: When ideas are unequal because one is logically
or emotionally more important than others, and when the writer wants to create
a climactic feeling of tension followed by resolution, the periodic
sentence can be a good choice. Its structure is the opposite of cumulative
structure -- phr or SC + MC. Subordinate clauses and/or phrases
precede the main clause, which is located at the end, near the period. (In
modern American English, periodic sentences are used more sparingly than
the three structures above.)
a. "If it had not been a fairly ordinary thing, in one part of the world,
to teach young children to pay the pianoforte, it is doubtful that
Mozart's music would exist." (Hearne)
b. "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work
we are in." (Abraham Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address")
c. "In the case of the omniscient point of view, the narrator sees all and
knows all." (Boynton, 250)
A sentence whose main clause lies between subordinate clauses and/or phrases
– phr/sc + MC + sc/phr -- is CUMULATIVE-PERIODIC. (Such structures
are common in English.) Ex: “For the draft horse or the weight-pull
dog, happiness is of a different kind, more awesome and less obviously intelligent.”
(Hearne)
5. INVERTED syntax: Writers occasionally use the inverted
sentence, which scrambles the typical dynamic English S-V-C structure.
(Because inversion can seem extremely artificial in English, it is used only
rarely--when required for cohesion, conciseness or emotional stress on certain
words. Note that inversion makes italicizing stressed words unnecessary.)
a. C-S-V: "Legal behavior it may be; moral behavior it is not."
b. C-V-S: "A very reckless man is William Jefferson."
c. V-S-C: “'Ride you this afternoon?'” (Macbeth, III,I,21)
d. C-S-V: "'Up you go!'"
6. INTERRUPTED syntax: Sometimes a writer interrupts the typical
English S-V-C syntax by inserting a word, phrase, or clause to separate
subject from verb or verb from complement, or by making an insertion into
the middle of a phrase. These interruptions control the movement of thought
-- usually to achieve greater clarity, to shift logical emphasis, or to communicate
an important concession, a wry tone, or especial complexity. Interrupting
phrases and clauses occupy optional slots and are enclosed in commas. (Interrupted
syntax is common in English.)
a. S [interruption] -V- C structure: "There is a rhinoceros whose
happiness, near as I can make out, is in needing to be trained every
morning, all over again, or else he 'forgets' his circus routine, and in
this you find a clue to the glory of the beast and to the slow, deep,
quiet chuckle of his happiness." (Hearne)
b. S -V [interruption] - C structure: "Suddenly I saw a boy lifted
into the air, glistening with sweat like a circus seal, and dropped
…" (Ralph Ellison)
c. S [interruption] -V- C: "If, for instance, a story were about
a young man’s growing sense of isolation from the small town in which he
grew up, so strongly felt that everything about the town—its physical setting,
its social codes, its people—seems to bear down upon him to stifle him, then
the setting would be central to the story." (Boynton 252)
d. Adverbs such as however, in fact, moreover, in addition, and
for instance are treated as interruptions when they appear in the middle
of a sentence; they are enclosed in commas: "There’s more to the selection
of setting, however, than simply the inevitable necessity of having
events take place somewhere at some time." (Boynton 258)
APPENDIX: VOCABULARY NEEDED FOR WORK WITH SENTENCES
The bold-faced terms are
used in the above pages; most of them are defined there. You must be able
to use them in your work on sentences and style. Locate and mark all the
terms below in your handbook, and learn their definitions:
1. subject
2. predicate
3. noun, pronoun
4. verb (transitive, intransitive)
5. adjective
6. adverb
7. phrase
8. clause (main or independent, and subordinate or dependent)
9. complement (subjective, objective)
10. object (direct, indirect)
11. antecedent
12. verbal - a verb form used as an adjective, adverb, or noun
13. participle - a verbal used as an adjective; verb + -ing, -ed, or
-en.
14. infinitive - a verbal used as an adjective, adverb, or noun; to
+ verb.
15. gerund - a verbal used as a noun; verb + -ing.
16. appositive - a noun closely following and renaming or restating another
noun
17. prepositional phrase - an adverbial phrase containing preposition +
object
18. coordinating conjunction - a word that connects words, phrases, and
clauses: and, but, or, for, nor, so, yet (memorize this complete list of
coord. conjunctions).
18. subordinating conjunction - a word that connects a subordinate (dependent)
clause to the main clause (partial list: because, when, after, since, although).
19. relative pronoun - a pronoun that forms the subject of a subordinate
clause (e.g., who, whoever, what, whatever, which, that)