What’s the us(ag)e?
14. You be the judge: what’s the sentence?
Below is a selection from a new book of mine, new in that it will be published sometime soon. It’s a book of poems based on the suppression of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), early in the past century (1917 to be exact, the name of the collection of poems being 1917: Sentences and Bills). The trial and resulting convictions of the IWW lead to it being effectively destroyed as a radical labor union. The IWW, unlike many labor unions, really believed in something and fought hard for its beliefs. And to sustain them in their battles, the members relied on humor. Here is an example. The trial is over. Over a hundred men have been found guilty and given long terms in prison. This is the last part of this section dealing with the sentencing:
…
Walter Nef
20 years and $20,000
Richard Brazier
20 years and $20,000
Vincente Azuara
20 years and $20,000
Ralph Chaplin
20 years and $30,000
George Andreychine
20 years and $30,000
William Haywood
20 years and $30,000
Ben Letcher, the only black defendant, joked with the press saying, “Things are pretty dull; if it wasn’t for me this trial would have no color.”
And when Landis read the charges against him and his friends, he whispered to Haywood, “The judge is using bad grammar. His sentences are much too long.”
Ben Letcher was wrong. But he knew it. He was being funny because he was so sad. He knew that the judge’s long sentences weren’t wrong because the grammar was bad; they were wrong because they were unjust and unfair. Sentences [in both meanings] are what writing is all about [since we are often condemned by them]. The sentence is the basic unit of writing. You might think that the word is the basic unit. And, you could probably make a better case for the word than I can for the sentence, but here is why my money’s on the sentence.
The spoken word is power. It comes from the breath, closely linked to breathing. In fact, in many language, the word for breath and the word for spirit are the same. And in speech, the act of talking with someone supplies its own reason for communicating. Writing, however, demands context. Writing must establish context for understanding to be possible. Unlike speech, there is no “two-way” communication with writing. When you talk to someone, you automatically are receiving a return message from that person as to how your communication is going. Even the refusal to reply to your message is a return message. And you can change your speech to compensate for the message your audience sends to you. But writing is not like that. It is a one-way communication with no return message. The context for understanding must be established with the act of writing. The sentence is the minimal unit necessary for establishing context. And the sentence, unlike the word, only exists in writing. You might, and you should, take exception to that last statement that “the sentence, unlike the word, only exists in writing.” We, do, after all, talk in sentences. Right?
Well, sort of. Sentences are marked by end punctuation. And there is no punctuation in speech. In speech we have a pause that substitutes for a period. We have a rising inflection of the final word that substitutes for a question mark. We have a loud voice that substitutes for an exclamation point. But are these “marks” really the same as end punctuation? You can’t see them. And they are very unreliable signals that a person has come to the end of what passes for a sentence.
Consider how sentences came into being. Writing used to be like this:
peopleoncewrotewithoutspacesbetweenwordsbecauseinspeechwordsruntogtherwithonesoundstoppingasthenextonebeginsintimethoughsincecommunicationwithreadersbecametheimportantreasonforwritingwriters made spaces between words to help the reader. And eventually, writers invented punctuation marks. These marks provided signals that helped the reader recognize gourpings of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. And, with the printing press, handwriting changed to type, making reading much more easier than before.
The sentence, then, has an historical evolution. And this evolution is through the history of writing. So, does a sentence exist in speech? It does, but it exists only as a reflection of its existence in writing, hence, my assertion that the sentence is the basic unit of writing.
Well, this explanation is going where? I’m not sure. Sometimes writing surprises the writer as well as the reader, and that’s what makes writing more interesting, to me, than speech. I think my explanation is an attempt to make sense of the sentence because if a person knows what a sentence is then that person will know a lot of how to make sense in writing. And in spite of my long and seemingly disconnected explanation, I am trying to make sense.
Most of the problems that people have with writing come from the fact that they don’t know what is a sentence. Take a closer look at the sentence above that I just wrote: Most of the problems that people have with writing come from the fact that they don’t know what is a sentence. This sentence fits the pattern of the basic English sentence: Subject + Verb + Object Phrase.
The basic sentence is this: “Most” is the subject; “come” is the verb and the remaining words following the verb make up the object phrase. Knowing this basic sentence means that you will not have a subject / verb agreement problem since the subject “Most” agrees with the verb “come.”
If you didn’t know what is the basic sentence, you might have written the sentence like this: Most of the problems that people have with writing comes from the fact that they don’t know what is a sentence.
But “comes” takes a singular subject. Since the word “writing” is next to “comes” our “oral” mind tells us that the word “writing” is the subject. But knowing what is the basic sentence, we know that the real subject is “Most [of the problems].”
[Aside: words like “most,” “some,” and “all” are singular or plural depending on whether they refer to quantity or number:
Most of the money was stolen. (quantity)
Most of the hundred dollar bills were stolen. (number)]
Knowing what constitutes the basic sentence (no matter how long the sentence is) is the key to solving most grammar problems. Once you identify the subject and the verb, you can see the pattern that the writer is using, and since there are only a small number of patterns, the sentences no longer seem so confusing.
This is the basic pattern of the Standard ENglish SentencE (SENSE): Subject + Verb + Object Phrase (S+V+OP).
Ex.—John hit the ball.
Here are some of the most common patterns based up this basic pattern:
Adding prepositional phrases (PP):
PP + S + V + OP
Ex.—With a mighty swing, John hit the ball.
PP + S + V + OP + PP
With a mighty swing, John hit the ball over the fence.
PP + S + V + OP + PP + PP
With a mighty swing, John hit the ball over the fence and out of
the park.
Adding a relative clause (RC):
PP + S (RC) + V + OP + PP + PP
With a mighty swing, John, who nearly always strikes out, hit the ball over the fence and out of the park.
Adding an appositive (Ap):
PP + S (RC) + V + OP (Ap) + PP + PP
With a mighty swing, John, who nearly always strikes out, hit the
ball, the one he found at the dump, over the fence and out of the park.
Sentences can get much more complicated than this one. And teachers should encourage students to write long and involved sentences if for no other reason than to have students reveal where their understanding of usage and grammar breaks down since this “breakdown” is where opportunities occur for teaching, which are also opportunities for teachers to praise students for being adventuresome in their writing and for helping other students understand more about the nature of written communication.
Now, that’s a long sentence. But it is also a relatively easy sentence to break down into its constituent parts. While it may be difficult for students to diagram such a sentence, since such a skill is no longer taught in our schools, students should be able to identify the basic core sentence: teachers (subject) should encourage (verb) + (object phrase).
Too many students have been sentenced to painful lessons about writing that have little to do with helping them be better at what is essential about writing: communicating at a (physical and temporal) distance from the audience. And this brings up the next lesson: the audience for writing is not wholly real; the audience is a ghost [not wholly a ghost, not holy at all, certainly not the Holy Ghost, but nonetheless a ghost].
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