The associative property of addition and multiplication (as, of course, we all so smoothly remember from our school days) has to do with how we group what we’re calculating. Adding the numbers 1 + 2 + 3 will sum 6 whether we add the 1 + 2 or the 2 + 3 first. In other words, (1 + 2) + 3 = 1 + (2 + 3). And so also if we are multiplying the same numbers. The associative property does not operate, however, when we accumulate clauses in a sentence, because unlike mathematics, language includes rhetoric, that addition of suggestion which shapes our statements ever so intentionally before the reader. To that end, though, it can help us organize our thoughts, and give us a way to look at our revisions. Here’s what I mean.
Every clause we write represents one thought (I should really be saying at least one thought, but for purposes of illustrating my point, it will be simpler here to think of a clause as combining one subject with one verb). Each verb is asserting something about its subject, and it does that by joining (and that is exactly what the verb assert means in its Latin derivation) one idea, the subject, with another idea, the predicate. So, for example, the clause interest rates are high now, is a thought, or assertion, exactly because the idea of interest rates and the idea of degree of amount have been joined together through the verb are. Logically we call this statement a thought, grammatically we call it a clause, and rhetorically we call it a simple sentence.
Let’s imagine now that I have three such thoughts about the larger idea, or theme, of buying a house. In addition to my first thought that interest rates are high now, I also want to say that I’d like to buy a house and I’m going to wait a few months for interest rates to come down. In composing my theme, I now have a choice to make: how do I group these three thoughts in order that my reader not only understands each one in its own right, but senses a compelling connection between them. My first choice, of course, is simply to add one thought after the next, keeping each as its own simple sentence but rearranging the order to follow a more natural progression: I’d like to buy a house. Interest rates are high now. I’m going to wait a few months for interest rates to come down. This is called a segregated sentence style, and its limitations are obvious: the monotonous tone is risky, and without conjunctions, it does not tell the reader how to logically connect each thought, one to the next.
But what if I use the associative property in mathematics as a model for combining the three distinct assertions into one more interesting sentence? The numerical statement of 1 + 2 + 3 (each number representing one thought) would become I’d like to buy a house, and interest rates are high now, and I’m going to wait a few months for them to come down. That won’t be the best choice, though, because I’ve merely accumulated the three thoughts all on the same logical plane by connecting each clause with the coordinating conjunction and. I have not succeeded in representing the logic of cause and effect that was obviously behind my original conception.
And here is where our analogy of the associative property can suggest some revisions. If I take (1 + 2) + 3 as a pattern (again, each number representing a clause), I might get this: I’d like to buy a house, but interest rates are high now; therefore, I’m going to wait a few months for them to come down. But the conjunction therefore might sound portentous for such an everyday remark, so another grouping of clauses, this time following the order 1 + (2 + 3), might work better: I’d like to buy a house; but interest rates are high now, and so I’m going to wait a few months for them to come down. And if I judge that sentence structure still too elaborate for the context, I might use this same second pattern across two sentences: I’d like to buy a house. But interest rates are high now, and so I’m going to wait a few months for them to come down.
Not knowing how to change what we have written in a draft accounts most often for the frustration we feel when we write. That doubt is resolved by looking first for our individual thoughts, and then putting them together in a meaningful pattern—one among many that we can choose from according to the context, the audience, and our intent. Underneath it all, though, is the clause, the thought, because the kind of writing most of us do most of the time, called expository prose, is about facts, each one explained in connection with another. And connection is just another word for that distinctively human trait—reason.
***