Our commonsense view of life tells us that the world is made up of things. There’s me, I, and there’s a world of persons and things that confront me—the natural world of land and sky, the social world of other people, and an abstract world of immaterial ideas. This is the commonsense view the philosophers call duality, and whether we are realists who believe that this is ultimately the way things are, or we are idealists who believe that this is merely the way the world appears to us, the view of duality is built into the grammar of most modern languages.

This observation can help us understand a basic grammatical fact which appears early in most serious writing manuals, so fundamental is it to handling our words well. The notion is called transitivity. Traditional grammars make the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs. Both are verbs of motion, but transitive verbs target their action directly at an object, what is therefore termed a direct object. If I say, for example, that I read an interesting essay on space travel last week, I as a subject undertook an action that had an effect on a particular object, an essay (or more completely, an interesting essay), which grammatically is now understood to be the direct object of the transitive verb read. An intransitive verb is simply a verb of motion without a direct object: I walked along the shore.

Many students find this a difficult concept to grasp at first, but it’s worth trying to understand this view of transitivity because the strongest sentence we can construct is one which is composed of a transitive verb having a concrete noun as its direct object. From that highpoint, all manner of variations are then possible (and inevitable). One reason it can be difficult to appreciate the mechanism of transitivity is illustrated in our example sentence. We said that a transitive verb is a verb of motion, but the clause I read an interesting essay doesn’t seem at first sight to express any motion—nothing is moving when one reads, except, of course, one’s eyes, but we’re usually not referring to that physical detail when we use the verb read; we mean, instead, to comprehend or reflect on or think about.

So there is physical motion and there is mental motion, and the latter is what the transitive verb read intends to convey as a verb of motion. And then there’s the difficulty of the term transitive itself. It is composed of the Latin preposition trans, meaning across, and the Latin verb it, meaning goes (we see the two elements in our phrase public transit, meaning something (a train or bus, for example) goes across (the city). The ancient grammatical physicists (so to speak) conceived of an action, then, as going across from a subject toward an object, and it was because of this aimed action that the direct object, and with it the entire circumstances of the context, were changed in some way. The direct object of a transitive verb must always be something other than the subject, and with that we can see how these verbs work hand in glove to enunciate the philosophical world view of duality. To write well is to write specifically, and one way to do that is to show who is acting on what, to articulate the actor, the acting, and the acted upon.

Our everyday language, therefore, reinforces the idea that we are part of a vast world of things, all continuously (not even merely continually) bumping up against and changing one another. That is what we mean commonly by the world. And we owe it to ourselves to realize that this view has found its way into the structure of our language, because whether in our deeper personal reaches we subscribe to that philosophical notion or not, it is the common view of our objectifying, rational culture—the one within which and about which we write. There have been some in other cultures, always, who have believed otherwise, and so found themselves writing poetry instead of prose. Prose sees a world of things but poetry sings, and it can be a very difficult thing to sing when one feels up against the world.

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Subject and predicate, form and syntax, nominative, possessive, and objective. The first dragon on the path to learning something new seems ever to be the special terminology that makes up an art or science. It can be greatly to our advantage, though, to be patient in familiarizing ourselves with these strange terms, because they have been coined for a reason by those who have preceded us, not the least of which is to help us ask the right question at the right time.

Here’s what I mean. A friend who tutors English came to me the other day a bit exasperated with the textbook he is required to use with his students, asking me how I would explain the construction of this sentence: We are looking for someone who can do the following: greet customers, wait on tables, and even help in the kitchen from time to time. The book, my friend explained, says that there must be a complete sentence before a colon, but how can that explanation help a student when the words we are looking for someone who can do the following do not sound complete? Anyone under that guidance would surely ask, the following what?

Both my friend’s question and the confusion his textbook unnecessarily causes arise from a simple problem: keeping the terms of the art of grammar straight and employing them methodically. To be referring to a sentence when one means an independent clause will only set up a student to appeal to the sound of the statement, because we all have heard from our earliest days that a sentence is a complete thought expressed in words. But to understand a sentence (in this context) is to see how its words work together, and so to refer to the term sentence when we must analyze a component of a sentence is to employ the wrong tool for the job. We’ve got an axe in our hand when we need a scalpel.

Instead, we should have at hand a few basic terms, some of which will serve us well on every occasion of grammatical analysis. A sentence is not a clause, and by clause we can mean either an independent clause or a subordinate one. A relative pronoun will begin a relative clause, and a relative clause may be restrictive or nonrestrictive. An adjective modifies a noun, but a substantive adjective has turned an adjective into a noun. All of these terms can appear daunting because they are so abstract, and so we hold them at arm’s length when we really should be getting comfortable with the precise distinctions they make—because precision is clarity and clarity is real knowledge.

So let’s look at what a few of these terms can do for us in answering my friend’s question. We’ve seen that sentence is too large a term for the ten words before the colon in the example, but we can’t simply substitute the term independent clause for it, because the ten words we are looking for someone who can do the following make up two clauses, one independent (we are looking for someone) and one subordinate (who can do the following). We know that those two elements work together logically because no comma separates the relative clause from the independent; taken together, then, they comprise a complex statement, and we can see (not hear) that such a statement is complete only when we determine that the adjective following is substantival: the following means the following things or tasks (just as the rich means rich people or the oppressed means oppressed men and women). On this more precise understanding, we could agree that the statement before the colon is grammatically complete and so the colon is in order to enumerate the specific tasks.

Technical terms will keep our attention attuned precisely to the structural detail on which a sentence is built. To analyze means, literally, to loosen apart, and the special terms of grammar (and any other art) help us both to find and to label all the constructive details we can identify with their help. To be daunted by the unfamiliar is to take a very long and winding path home.

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Here is a short and beautiful passage from Rachel Carson’s The Edge of the Sea, and in reading these masterful sentences closely, we can observe how a good writer prefers more often to tell readers what is going on, rather than simply tell them what is—to prefer, that is, action over being:

Now I hear the sea sounds about me; the night high tide is rising, swirling with a confused rush of waters against the rocks below my study window. Fog has come into the bay from the open sea, and it lies over water and over the land’s edge, seeping back into the spruces and stealing softly among the juniper and the bayberry. The restive waters, the cold wet breath of the fog, are of a world in which man is an uneasy trespasser; he punctuates the night with the complaining groan and grunt of a foghorn, sensing the power and menace of the sea.

A quick analysis of these three sentences reveals eight clauses, four of which have obvious principal verbs of action (hear, has come, lies, and punctuates), and two which have present tense forms of the verb to be (restive waters are and man is). The verb is after the noun tide in the first line is not a principal verb, but auxiliary to forming the progressive aspects of the two verbs rise and swirl, so we remain on solid ground in counting merely two instances of the verb to be across these eight clauses.

Now all of that basic analysis is a lot of busy work if we don’t next try to understand the effective difference between expressing action over being. Grammar teachers know (and perhaps some philosophy teachers as well) that no verb and no idea causes more trouble than to be and being. That’s because, I think, we unconsciously assume being—things, and we ourselves, obviously exist, right?—and so why would we need a verb, or even a concept, for it? The difficulty we have in understanding being, then, has to do, strangely, with our intimate awareness of it, and so to express it, or even try rationally to explicate it, only confuses our natural orientation to life.

Being, in other words, is the stage on which action takes place, and to spend too much time telling a reader what something is takes time and attention away from what that same thing is doing on the stage of life, and what consequences are resulting from its actions. Action changes the world, it moves the world, and since we are a part of the world, whether the actual world which confronts us or an imaginative one we wish to make ourselves a part of, we are the more interested and involved and concerned when we see things changing around us. We can see how to combine these two aspects of life in the concluding third sentence of Carson’s passage, where she says that the restive waters… are of a world in which man is an uneasy trespasser; the two verbs of being there work beautifully to convey the categorical manner of her belief. But note what she does then in the balance of the same sentence: she quickly reverts to the somewhat unexpected transitive verb punctuates in order to demonstrate what man does to be named an uneasy trespasser. To act, in other words, is to be.

That combination of being and action within the confines of a single sentence neatly illustrates, ironically, why we can go too far in saying that good writers avoid the verb to be. That is distinctly not true; one cannot write English without using some form of the verb to be. But it is true and helpful to say that good writers prefer action to being, remembering, as Carson did here, that things are what they are by virtue of what they do—at least in the art of language and some say even in life itself.

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I read this sentence the other day in a news article and had to read it twice: His and his associates’ excuses are not convincing. The grammar is impeccable, but the fact that its construction can make a reader stumble is enough to think carefully about its style and what other configurations are possible. The grammar of a sentence is one thing, its rhetoric, or persuasive capacity, quite another.

Let’s begin by assuring ourselves of the grammatical integrity of the sentence. The statement constitutes a simple sentence, meaning it comprises just one independent clause, or one complete thought. The subject is excuses, and that plural noun is tied to the plural verb are in the predicate. The subject phrase, which means the subject together with all the words modifying it, is his and his associates’ excuses, and we can’t make any grammatical complaint on that side of the sentence either, because the first instance of his points to one possessor of excuses, the second instance points to the possessor of the associates, and the noun associates’, with its apostrophe, points to another possessors of excuses. In other words, three of the four words in the subject phrase correctly function as forms of the possessive case. On the predicate side, brief and to the point, we would also be hard pressed to find any grammatical fault.

So why, then, does the sentence not roll smoothly off the page? As possessives, the two instances of his and the noun associates’ all need something to possess; the idea of possession, that is, always involves at least two entities: the possessor and the possessed. The reader, therefore, is expected to hold the first four words of the sentence in abeyance before the fifth word, excuses, organizes and completes the logic. An arrangement of words like this is called a suspended style, which is not a mistake, but is an order peculiar enough to presume a weightier and more intellectually involved context. I found this sentence in a news article, where the emphasis is usually more on facts than literary shaping, and it was just the assumption that I was reading for information which set the sentence askew.

So what other choices did the writer have? Both his excuses and his associates’ are not convincing. His excuses, and his associates’ as well, are not convincing. All those excuses, his own and his associates’, are not convincing. Any of these versions would bring the subject up to the beginning of the sentence, thereby orienting the reader more quickly to the matter under statement. Note, too, that each of these revisions includes a rhetorical addition to stabilize the sentence. The first version employs the correlative conjunctions both…and to create expectation: reading both, we wait for an and (this being the opposite of the suspension which characterizes the original version). The second version places the second possessor between commas, helping the reader retain the subject excuses as the chief idea. And the third places both the possessives in a parenthetical phrase, by which the focus is keep strongly on the excuses. This last version, therefore, might be the least effective choice if the writer intended to assign any culpability.

We should observe, finally, that all of these versions, including the original, mean that his excuses were of one kind and his associates’ excuses of another: he, for example, might have said that the item was late in being delivered, and his associates might have said the item had never been ordered. Both, in other words, had different excuses, and we can rightly infer this because both possessors are shown in the possessive case. If, however, both he and his associates had the one same excuse, then the grammar would read he and his associates’ excuses are not convincing, keeping the first pronoun in the nominative case. The former is called individual possession, the latter, joint possession.

Sometimes, then, revision follows a very simple rule: just reword it.

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I am reposting today a short piece entitled The Essential Minimum, an introduction I wrote some years ago to the basics that underlie composition and revision. The concepts here are straightforward enough, but they need to be reviewed from time to time until they become second nature for us as we carefully craft our words. Next week, we will employ some of these basics in analyzing this unusually constructed short sentence: His and his associates’ excuses are not convincing. A close inspection of all that next time.

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The Essential Minimum

What would be the very first things to know if we wanted to begin a practical review of English grammar? Learning a skill involves both theory and practice, but too often we’re ready to get practicing without an understanding of what we’re doing and why. Here are five points that can give direction to our study of writing and language.

The Three Elements. There are three basic elements in language: word, phrase, and clause. We combine these three elements, along with a few marks of punctuation, to build sentences and express our thoughts, no matter how simple or complex. Writing clearly ultimately depends on thinking clearly, and we do that when we make distinctions, when we put the right words to the ideas we have in mind. Every word, phrase, and clause we write must count, without exception.

Subject and Predicate. The first and most important distinction we make in communicating our ideas is between what we are talking about and what we are saying about it. What we are talking about—the idea we have put down for discussion and wish our reader to pay attention to—is called the subject. What we are saying about the subject—what we want our reader to understand—is called the predicate. So in the sentence Chicago has many beautiful parks, the word Chicago is the subject and has many beautiful parks is the predicate. The predicate always contains the verb. When we join a subject with a predicate like this, we produce a thought.

Clause and Phrase. A group of words with a subject and a predicate is called a clause. Every clause expresses one thought, because every clause combines a subject and a predicate. By contrast, a group of words without a subject and predicate is called a phrase. A phrase, like a word, merely expresses an idea, not a thought. It suggests or implies something, but because it does not include a verb that explicitly says something, it cannot express a thought. So simply to say Chicago or many beautiful parks is not really to say anything at all. Each points to an idea, of course, but without a verb, that’s right where we stay—in the world of ideas.

Sentences. A sentence is a complete statement that is made up of at least one clause. A simple sentence has one and only one clause. A compound sentence has two or more clauses. So we can say that the statement Chicago has many beautiful parks is both a clause and a simple sentence. If we wish to expand the statement by adding another clause to express another thought, we create a compound sentence: Chicago has many beautiful parks, and we often bike the trails there in the summer. This compound sentence has two clauses and is therefore stating two thoughts.

Parsing. To analyze the grammatical structure of a sentence is called parsing. It is customary simply to place a vertical bar between the subject and its predicate; this is the essential analysis, because it isolates the two fundamental parts of a thought. It can also be helpful to bracket the verb and parenthesize phrases. A verb is the controlling force of a clause, and identifying where it stands gives us a point of reference from which to determine whether the other components of the statement are in the right place. Phrases, like individual words, act as specific parts of speech; seeing clearly where a phrase begins and ends makes it easier to decide if it’s in the correct position. A very simple analysis of a compound sentence, then, (and often a simple and quick analysis is all that is needed to help sort out a statement) looks like this: Chicago | [has] (many beautiful parks), and we | often [bike] the trails there (in the summer). We’re now ready to continue with a deeper analysis should we need to.

These five points make up the bedrock of our study to improve our use of language, both as we speak it and write it to describe and explain our ideas to others. Technically, this kind of language is called expository prose, and so it’s right to put such an emphasis on thought as we analyze it: expository prose explains, demonstrates, makes clear—the way we use language most of the time. And although there are other, less analytical (and some say therefore higher) ways to compose language (poetry and song, for example), expository prose is the primary means we use to live the day and build the world. The better we understand how it works, the clearer our thoughts and ideas will be to ourselves and others.

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