are examples, with distinct emotional patterns of emphasis and expectation set up by their syntax.
I love thinking about grammar in this way. In the past in other English classes when we talk about tone and mood I have just had to do a vague vibe check, now that I can identify these structures and what they do to a sentence I can justify the emotions the passages elicit.
meaning precedes and is then decorated by style, and those who feel that meaning and style are simultaneous because the same.
This section was a bit of a light bulb moment for me. Grammar isn't decorative, it is the core of the sentence and creates meaning. I usually think of it as a way to convey the meaning of a sentence, but reading this passage now, that feels wrong. The structure and style of a sentence, a passage, or a book IS the idea or the meaning and gives the emotional variety of whatever you are reading. The way something is written is just as important as what is written.
grammar, composition, and literature.
This is very true, I am taking a few other English courses this semester and the way we learn in all of these classes is so different. But they are symbiotic, what I learn here helps me in other classes and how I write in other classes informs my application of grammatical structures in this class.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch.
I know I said that one sentence in Hemmingway made me want to reconsider my life, but Woolf's sentence structure is a whole new can of worms. With the number of prepositional and adjectival phrases in this sentence alone, I think I would take up about two pages trying to diagram it. That said, I like this style better than Hemmingway. The descriptive nature and the inclusion of multiple phrases in one sentence makes this feel more true to life and natural human thought.
But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week.
Looking at this sentence and thinking about what would happen if I tried to diagram it makes me want to pull my hair out. It is so long and descriptive. I remember this week we learned that "but" could be a subordinator. To me this looks like "but after forty days without fish" is a clause: adverb-time. Hemmingway writes complex structures to be sure, but his work does not seem to include as many phrases and clauses as Woolf.
'm still trying everything to keep you looking at me
There are way fewer imperative statements in Taylor Swift's song. Her tone feels more desperate while Metallica's felt more commanding. She uses the personal pronoun "I" in Mirrorball far more often than Enter Sandman. Both songs have an unsettling tone but in different ways. Sandman's sentence structure lends itself to being more oppressively unsettling while the consistent BE verbs and personal pronouns make Mirrorball unsettling in a more philosophical sense as it is more focused on personal identity.
It's just the beasts under your bedIn your closet in your head
The three prepositions in a row give the Metallica song an unending feel, but not in a /bad/ way just in a bad way in the sense that this song is terrifying. The nightmarish tone is added to be this sentence structure. The feeling of the nightmare being inescapable, in that they are under the bed and in your closet AND in your head. I know this has been noted before but the imperative structure also makes this scary. Its a command to endure these bad things.
living in the orchard and beinghungry, and pluckingthe fruit
This particular phrase stuck out to me. Levertov's whole poem feels like a big idea with not much describable form. Wordsworth broke his poem up into thoughts, even if they are hard to dissect. The phrase here uses the conjunction and repeatedly and the words correlate on the topic of food. This is really the only line I could make sense of so I wanted to highlight it.
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
I quickly tried to diagram this sentence in my head. It seems so simple but has both a present participial phrase and a relative clause. These small additions working as adjectives add so much color to the prose. Grammar is fun :)
this
The conjunction in the line before, among other things, confused me a bit so now I don't know exactly what this "this" refers to. Is Wordsworth referencing only the wind? Or nature as a whole? or is this "this" a substitute for the "for everything" that follows?
“Black” but not “White” is to give white people a pass on seeing themselves as arace and recognizing all the privileges they get from it.
Personally, I do not think there is a cultural tie to whiteness in the same way there is for Black people in America. But I do understand the need to create a uniform system of racial identifiers in the grammatical system. Even if there are not exactly cultural ties there is still a race of white people that gives certain privileges to those with certain skin tone and that should be acknowledged. I do think to highlight whiteness can back fire in a dangerous way as previously stated in the article. This is such a delicate area and I think only those who have been impacted by the words used to represent them should get a say in how they are referred to.
him
Am I mistaken or is this the first usage of gendered language in the article? Its nice to see that gendered language isn't necessary to writing. I feel like there is a lot of pressure from traditionalists to not allow the English language to grow and change. Our survival isn't dependent on whether we use his or hers in a sentence and I think it is time for some people to accept that language shifts.
the social construction of gender or the patriarchalroots of traditional pronouns
Are pronouns inherently patriarchal in our society? I have never thought about it that way. I know some people use they/them because they do not see themselves as conforming to the gender binary but is gender and gendered language in and of itself patriarchal?
Gender-neutral pronouns like “ze,” “thon” and “heer”
I have heard of the pronoun ze, but only recently as it was allowed as a third option on some scandanavian legal document I think. I have never heard of thon or heer, which is surprising considering these options have been around for so long. It seems strange to me that they have been erased or at the very least sidelined from popular culture or mainstream thought.
t clarifies the intent of the legislature
Do semicolons ever really clarify anything? This feels more like an out of the frying pan and into the fire kind of scenario. No rational human seeking to end confusion opts for using semicolons. This is a disaster waiting to happen, Maine is a grammatical ticking time bomb.
the shipment ordistribution of them
This is absolutely remarkable. I love minuscule pedantic problems like this. And in this case, it was actually worthwhile to proceed with proving the writer of this law was being grammatically incorrect because the payout was absolutely astronomical.
sacred defender of clarity
This is my main reasoning for loving the Oxford comma. I am a stickler for clarity. I can understand the point of contention, however I think it is more valuable to provide the extra guideline than to potentially confuse your readers.
agreed to pay $5 million
$5 million for one grammar mistake? Maybe my parents were wrong and an english degree does pay.
“once very fashionable”
When do we get to invent the semi that is just a dot floating in the middle ground of a sentence? I don't know what it will mean but we can brainstorm. I want to start the next grammar trend.
twenty-five rules and exceptions for the comma
It is strange that we have all of these specific rules in the minutia of grammar. I have never heard of the 25 rules and exceptions for using a comma. I still think I write in a comprehensible way.
Since these ruleswould stem directly from scrutiny of the English language in action, theycould be assured of apprehending the truth; and the enterprise as a wholethus mirrored the virtues of the natural sciences championed in the press,where commentators argued that students were naturally inclined towardsthe observation and study of natural phenomena
I hate this sentence. I think it proves the point of the semi colon only being used as a convoluted tool to make a run on sentence more difficult to comprehend, but still technically grammatically correct. The author could have easily just split the sentence in to two or three separate thoughts or just written more clearly.
John Milton and William Shake-speare were chastised for “gross mistakes” and subjected to correction
I'm reading Hamlet in my Shakespeare class and we have had extensive discussions on the differences in spelling and grammar as the editions and years have progressed.
once regarded with admiration, come to seem so offen-sive, so unwieldy
I truly cannot imagine a world where the semicolon was easy to use and people enjoyed it.