A Grammar for Reading and Writing

A Grammar for Reading and Writing (adapted from http://www.critical-reading.com/grammar_reading_writing.htm) We do not read words, one by one. Meaning is contained not so much in individual words as in collections of words conveying broader or more specific ideas. Readers thus make sense of a sentence by breaking it into meaningful chunks and examining their interrelationships. Skillful writers focus not so much on individual words, as on creating and rephrasing larger phrases and clauses. The topics covered here describe the "meaningful chunks" of English sentence structure. In so doing they examine key grammatical principles underlying effective reading and writing. Speaking Constructions, Not Words When discussing speech, we say we know something when we can repeat it "word for word." Yet, when we speak, we do not really speak "one word at a time." We break the flow of words into chunks. And we do not do this randomly, simply to take a breath now and then. We insert pauses to break the flow into meaningful chunks. We do not say I left my raincoat on the chair. We say: I left my raincoat on the chair. When we break a sentence into portions, whether by pauses or intonation, we are actually doing grammatical analysis. We break the sentence into chunks to facilitate understanding. Reading and Writing Constructions, Not Words Words appear on a page one word after another. Yet readers do not read word by word, one word at a time. As with speech, we find meaning by grouping words into larger units. You might think that you read the previous sentence word by word: As with speech, we find meaning by grouping words into larger units. Yet meaning becomes apparent only when you see the line somewhat as: As with speech, we find meaning by grouping words into larger units. It makes little difference whether we call these units chunks or use more technical terminology (such as phrases and clauses , or the more general term constructions ), the point is the same: We read chunks, not individual words. The observations above suggest a test: Listen to someone read a passage aloud. You can gauge their understanding by how easily they group words into meaningful chunks as they read. Ambiguity The mental process involved in finding meaning in a string of words is most apparent when various alternative readings make sense that is, in situations that are ambiguous. She did not marry him because she loved him. Are they married? It depends on how you read the sentence: She did not marry him because she loved him. They are not married. She did not marry him because she loved him. She married him for other reasons. We find meaning by deciding on a meaningful way to analyze the sentence. In so doing we often attempt to recreate the natural pauses and emphasis that might indicate structure were the words spoken. Try another one. The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday Who was hit? How? Do we know the gender of the driver? Do we know the nature of the accident? In an effort to make sense of the sentence, we analyze it various ways. The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday We find meaning by finding ways to break the sentence into meaningful chunks. In the first, the driver's own head is injured on a specific day. The driver is female. The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday In the second instance, the driver hit a female in a head on collision. The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday In the third, and more improbable, alternative a drunk driver somehow hit a female's head. The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday Maybe she was leaning over into traffic! Should we come upon such a sentence within a text, we would look to the context to decide which reading is appropriate. Structure and Meaning Finally, consider the following three sentences: 1. The boy ate the apple in the pie. 2. The boy ate the apple in the summer. 3. The boy ate the apple in a hurry. At first glance, the three sentences seem to have the same structure. 1. The boy ate the apple in the pie. 2. The boy ate the apple in the summer. 3. The boy ate the apple in a hurry. As we try to find meaning in the sentences, however, we discover that their structure is different: 1. The boy ate the apple in the pie. 2. The boy ate the apple in the summer. 3. The boy ate the apple in a hurry. how we break a sentence up. Punctuation often helps in this effort, but punctuation marks only certain boundaries. There is the story of the English teacher who wrote the following words on the board and asked the students to punctuate the sentence: Woman without her man is nothing. Students came away with different meanings, depending on how they grouped the words. (Reach an understanding of the sentence yourself, then see the footnote for the results.) (1) Slots, Constructions, and Meaning Once we recognize that we actually read chunks, we might then ask: · How do we recognize chunks? What do they look like? And that leads to two other questions: · Where in a sentence do these chunks normally fall, and · What meaning can we attach to a particular chunks that is, to a particular grammatical construction occurring in a particular position in a sentence? Complete Reference: The Noun Phrase looks at the most common construction in English sentences. Other sections identify particular positions or slots within a sentence and the meaning attached to the various constructions appearing in those positions. (1) Some read the words as: Woman, without her man, is nothing. Others read the same words as: Woman! Without her, man is nothing. We find, to a great extent, what we want to find! Complete Reference: The Noun Phrase Full References The discussion of the choice of language noted that a single concept is often signaled by a variety of words, each word possessing slightly different connotations. We can indicate that people are less than content by saying they are angry , irate , incensed , perturbed , upset , furious , or mad. The broader our vocabulary, the greater our options and the more precisely we can convey our meaning. And yet no matter how wide our vocabulary may be, a single word is often insufficient. A single word, by itself, can appear somewhat vague, no matter how specific that word might seem. The term `dog’ may be specific compared to `mammal,’ but it is general compared to `collie.’ And `collie’ is general compared to `Lassie.’ Then again, many different dogs played Lassie! Suppose you want to indicate a female person across the room. If you don’t know her name, what do you say? That girl. If there were more than one, this alone would be too general. It lacks specificity. The girl in the blue Hawaiian shirt x The taller of the two cheerleaders by the water cooler When a single term will not supply the reference we need, we add terms to focus or limit a more general term. Instead of referring to drugs in a discussion, we might refer to hallucinogenic drugs. We might distinguish between hard drugs and prescription drugs . In so doing we modify the notion of a drug to describe the specific one, or ones, we have in mind. (Then again, at times we are forced to use many words when we cannot recall the one that will really do, as when we refer to that funny device doctors pump up on your arm to measure blood pressure instead of a sphygmomanometer ). This section examines how we construct full and specific references using noun phrases. An ability to recognize complete noun phrases is essential to reading ideas rather than words. A knowledge of the various possibilities for constructing extended noun pharses is essential for crafting precide and specific references. Nouns To begin our discussion, we must first establish the notion of a noun. English teachers commonly identify nouns by their content. They describe nouns as words that "identify people, places, or things," as well as feelings or ideas—words like salesman , farm , balcony , bicycle , and trust. If you can usually put the word a or the before a word, it’s a noun. If you can make the word plural or singular, it's a noun. But don't worry .all that is needed at the moment is a sense of what a noun might be. Noun Pre-Modifiers What if a single noun isn't specific enough for our purposes? How then do we modify a noun to construct a more specific reference? English places modifiers before a noun. Here we indicate the noun that is at the center of a noun phrase by an asterisk (*) and modifiers by arrows pointed toward the noun they modify. white house * large man * Modification is a somewhat technical term in linguistics. It does not mean to change something, as when we "modify" a car or dress. To modify means to limit, restrict, characterize, or otherwise focus meaning. We use this meaning throughout the discussion here. Modifiers before the noun are called pre-modifiers. All of the pre-modifiers that are present and the noun together form a noun phrase . NOUN PHRASE pre-modifiers noun * By contrast, languages such as Spanish and French place modifiers after the noun casa blanca white house * homme grand big man * The most common pre-modifiers are adjectives, such as red , long , hot . Other types of words often play this same role. Not only articles the water * but also verbs running water * and possessive pronouns her thoughts * Premodifiers limit the reference in a wide variety of ways. Order: second, last Location: kitchen, westerly Source or Origin: Canadian Color: red, dark Smell: acrid, scented Material: metal, oak Size: large, 5-inch Weight: heavy Luster: shiny, dull A number of pre-modifiers must appear first if they appear at all. Specification: a, the, every Designation: this, that, those, these Ownership/Possessive: my, our, your, its, their, Mary’s Number: one, many These words typically signal the beginning of a noun phrase. Some noun phrases are short: the table → * Some are long: the second shiny red Swedish touring sedan * a large smelly red Irish setter * my carved green Venetian glass salad bowl * the three old Democratic legislators * Notice that each construction would function as a single unit within a sentence. (We offer a test for this below,) The noun phrase is the most common unit in English sentences. That prevalence can be seen in the following excerpt from an example from the section on the choice of language: The stock market’s summer swoon turned into a dramatic rout Monday as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged. The stock market’s summer swoon turned into a dramatic rout * * Monday as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged. * * To appreciate the rich possibilities of pre-modifiers, you have only to see how much you can expand a premodifier in a noun phrase: the book the history book the American history book the illustrated American history book the recent illustrated American history book the recent controversial illustrated American history book the recent controversial illustrated leather bound American history book Noun Post-Modifiers We were all taught about pre -modifiers: adjectives appearing before a noun in school. Teachers rarely speak as much about adding words after the initial reference. Just as we find pre -modifiers, we also find post -modifiers— modifiers coming after a noun. The most common post-modifier is prepositional phrases: the book on the table * civil conflict in Africa * the Senate of the United States * Post-modifiers can be short a dream * or long, as in Martin Luther King Jr.’s reference to a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves * and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. What does King have? A dream? No. He has a specific dream. Once we are sensitive to the existence of noun phrases, we recognize a relatively simple structure to the sentence. Here we recognize a noun phrase with a very long post-modifier—thirty-two words to be exact. We do not get lost in the flow of words, but recognize structure. At the point that we recognize structure within the sentence, we recognize meaning. (Notice also that post-modifiers often include clauses which themselves include complete sentences, as in the last example above.) Post-modifiers commonly answer the traditional news reporting questions of who , what , where , when , how , or why . Noun post-modifiers commonly take the following forms: prepositional phrase the dog in the store * _ing phrase the girl running to the store * _ed past tense the man wanted by the police * wh - clauses the house where I was born * that/which clauses the thought that I had yesterday * If you see a preposition, wh - word ( which, who, when where ), -ing verb form, or that or which after a noun, you can suspect a post-modifier and the completion of a noun phrase. The noun together with all pre- and post-modifiers constitutes a single unit, a noun phrase that indicates the complete reference. Any agreement in terms of singular/plural is with the noun at the center. The boys on top of the house are . * Here the noun at the center of the noun phrase is plural, so a plural form of the verb is called for (not a singular form to agree with the singular house) . The Pronoun Test In school, we were taught that pronouns replaced nouns . Not so. Pronouns replace complete noun phrases . Pronoun replacement thus offers a test of a complete noun phrase. Consider: The boy ate the apple in the pie. What did he eat? The boy ate the apple in the pie. * Want proof? Introduce the pronoun `it’ into the sentence. If a pronoun truly replaces a noun, we’d get *The boy ate the it in the pie. No native speaker would say that! They’d say The boy ate it. The pronoun replaces the complete noun phrase, the apple in the pie . Boxes Within Boxes: Testing for a Complete Noun Phrase The goal of reading, we noted above, is not to recognize grammatical features, but to find meaning. The goal is not to break a sentence or part of a sentence into as small pieces as possible, but to break it into chunks in such a way that fosters the discovery of meaning. Consider one of the examples above of a prepositional phrase as a post-modifier: the book on the table Book is a noun at the center of the noun phrase. But table is also a noun. If we analyze the noun phrase completely, on all levels, we find: the book on the table * on the table → * We can have prepositional phrase within prepositional phrase within prepositional phrases: …the book on the table in the kitchen… * on the table in the kitchen… * in the kitchen … * We don't want to recognize every little noun phrase. We want to recognize the larger ones that shape the meaning. The book is not "on the table." The book is "on the table in the kitchen." The Senate of the United States is composed of two legislators from each State. Question: Who is in the Senate? a) two legislators b) two legislators from each State? The answer is b). The full Senate consists of two from each state (100 people), not simply two! We read the sentence as The Senate of the United States is composed of two legislators from each State. * If we read the sentence as [...]... bracket somewhat of an aside, added for emphasis, while the commas bracket an insertion that is more critical to assuring the proper understanding As always with inserts, we can read straight through without the inserts As one good story about what we are and who we want to be , , it can be remarkably illuminating or As one good story about what we are and who we want to be , it can be remarkably... imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare In the final version a comma was changed to a semicolon The Legislature of the United States shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises ; to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare Examples of sentence modifiers throughout a text are offered in an annotated... great chapter in American life came to a close and a great new chapter began To test this analysis, try shifting the modifier: A great chapter in American life came to a close, and a great new chapter began [ when Ulysses S Grant and Robert E Lee met in the parlor of a modest house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia to work out the terms for the surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia The large... spiritual exercises under the guidance of a thirty-one-year-old Gandhian, James Lawson, who had served prison time as a conscientious objector during the Korean War and studied nonviolence for three years in India (3) Note how to make sense of the passage you instinctively separate our chunks It was lucky for David Halberstam, for the civil rights movement, and for all of us that Halberstam became a reporter... soldiers after-the-fact, and largely ineffective, chemical prophylaxis And there are two inserts that supply the information that the New Zealand Expeditionary forces gave their troops condoms and that the after-the-fact American efforts were largely ineffective: Unlike the New Zealand Expeditionary forces, which gave condoms to their soldiers, the United States decided to give American soldiers after-the-fact,... not really have this option, other than maybe by CAPITALIZING and punctuation! Speakers can also introduce a “pregnant pause” that draws attention to last word uttered and introduces anticipation of the next idea Writers can achieve somewhat the same effect by introducing inserts My brother is a chemist My brother, you recall, is a chemist The comma before an insert introduces a visual pause that stresses... understand the words, we may come away with little understanding because the writing itself is particularly complex In this latter instance, it is often helpful to apply grammatical analysis, to consciously attempt to break the sentence into meaningful units A Model Of English Sentence Structure All English sentences follow the same basic formula All speakers of the language are familiar with that formula,... it has made so many spurious claims for itself As a science, as an efficient cure for misery, as a secular religion, as a supreme explanation of virtually everything, it is wholly implausible As one good story—among many others—about what we are and who we want to be, though, it can be remarkably illuminating There is no cure for being alive, but useful and interesting descriptions of our predicament... predicament can make a difference Another Example The following is the opening of a book review of, among other books, David Halberstam's The Children, a history of the early days of the civil right movement It was lucky for David Halberstam, for the civil rights movement, and for all of us that Halberstam became a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean in 1956 Just a year out of Harvard, he was given a front-row... reinterpretation of two novels: One of the reasons that so many people have lost interest in psychoanalysis—as a convincing and useful story about the kind of people we are—is that it has made so many spurious claims for itself As a science, as an efficient cure for misery, as a secular religion, as a supreme explanation of virtually everything, it is wholly implausible As one good story—among many others—about . A Grammar for Reading and Writing (adapted from http://www.critical -reading. com /grammar_ reading_ writing. htm) We do not read words, one by one. Meaning. end. Tactics and Strategies Some basic tactics and strategies for reading and writing should be apparent. You can make better sense of long and complicated