WRT333

Agent and Action

Syllabus |Table of Pages | Exercises

Links this page: sentence pattern | verb strength | dummy subjects | passive voice | personal pronouns

Sentence Patterns

Human speech evolved over the ~130,000 years that our species has existed. We can imagine that for much of our history, we talked about threats and opportunities, such as sabertooths and bears that threatened us, or how we might trap a wooley mammoth that could feed the clan for the winter. Our brains mixed pictures from our memories with grunts and sounds, allowing a symbolic (semiotic) mind to emerge. The process of rapid coding and decoding developed over thousands of years, with those who decoded expeditiously ("Onk, watch out for the mountain lion that is about to leap down on you!) gaining a survival edge. Speech that evoked a sharp image of agent (lion) and action (leap down) may have been easiest for us to understand. Although our world has grown more complex in the 5-6,000 years since we started writing, in general it is still easiest for us to understand speech (and writing) when the word symbols evoke sharp images of agents and actions.

When we English speakers talk to each other, we use a remarkably simple set of speech patterns. Our most effective (from the hearer / reader perspective) speech puts the agent and action together as subject and verb in simple sentence patterns. Five patterns make up most of our sentences:

  1. Subject → Verb (intransitive)
    The earth...quaked.
  2. Subject → Verb (transitive) → Direct Object
    The Storm...destroyed...New Orleans.
  3. Subject ←→ Verb (linking/state of being) ←→ Completer (noun or adjective)
    The City...was...in tatters.
  4. Subject → Verb (transitive) → Indirect Object | Direct Object
    The Feds...sent...the refugees...FEMA trucks filled with ice.
  5. Subject → Verb (transitive) → Direct Object | Completer (noun or adjective)
    Everyone...saw...the situation...as the Administration's failure.

DeGeorge et al. (1984) estimate that these patterns are used for 75 to 95% of our written sentences.

  1. Left branches: Sampling a large body of writing suggests that 5-20% of sentences put a short addition before the subject, as in

"Before going to war, the President presented his case to the Nation."

Writers may also use a longer addition (referred to as a left branch),

"Based on a convincing but eventually proven to be totally false case for weapons of mass distruction, the United States invaded Iraq."

The short left branch is often used for a transitional phrase which helps the reader move from the previous sentence into the current one:

"At first, the rationalizing fiction was widely believed."

Verb Strength / Linking Verbs

Your writing style is the way you structure sentences and select your words; the goal in choosing a writing style is to make it easiest (most expedient and efficient) for a reader to get the meaning you intended from your writing. For your reader, this is a process that involves mental decoding; that is, reading requires mental translation from symbol to image, and to be efficient, the reader has to be able to do this fast. You help most readers by making the subject of a sentence as concrete as possible (as opposed to abstract) and by—as often as you can—making that subject the cause of an mental-image-producing action. For example, in

The shark attacked the swimmer.

the imagery of the agent and its action is vivid. The alternative, in which the subject is acted upon,

The swimmer was attacked by the shark..

is still an engrossing scene, but ask yourself what the swimmer is doing in your mind (swimming, floating, panicking, nothing?). While there is still plenty of action in the entire sentence, the swimmer isn't doing the action that is contained in the verb, and the overall image is weaker. If your goal is to create the sharpest, most readily "seen" mental image, only one alternative would serve your reader best. That is what we mean by verb strength.

Linking verbs. The strength of mental imagery is further weakened with state-of-being (linking) verbs (pattern 3, above). These Is verbs (is, are, was, were, has been, had been) contain little action; they weren't intended to! This pattern, and these verbs, are merely linking two subjects (one as part of another) or an object with a quality of that object (adjective or adverb). We don't want to avoid sentences with linking verbs because they can be too important to avoid (don't try too hard!). Be aware, however, that when your writing proliferates this pattern, it begins to create a fuzz in reader's brains. You can sometimes find a more active verb (agent / action pattern) as an alternative.

The lessons of the Iraq War are important to future policy,

might translate into

The lessons of the Iraq War tell us important things for future policy decisions.

Dummy (abstract) Subjects

When you use words like it or there as a subject, you remove a concrete agent. For example,

There is an important lesson to be learned here

(what does "there" look like in your mind, and what is it doing?) might be more easily decoded if it were

Americans must learn an important lesson here.

You don't have to eliminate dummy subjects (they can be useful!), but be aware that stronger alternatives may exist, and use them sparingly.

Passive Voice

Passive-voice sentences contain subjects that do not act, but rather are acted upon. For example,

The policy decisions were subjected to analysis by the panel.

The verb were subjected to is passive-voice. The subject (policy decisions) is being acted upon; i.e., it sits there passively, not doing anything. The active-voice alternative is

The panel analyzed the policy decisions.

We can understand both sentences, but the passive version takes longer for us to decode, it has a weak verb, and it requires more words. Strings of passive-voice sentences all piled up begin to really slow down readers. Note that in the passive version, the verb is weak (what motion comes to mind when you read "were subjected to"?), and the real action in the sentence is tied up in the abstract analysis—we'll come back to this later.

To unscramble a flacid passive-voice sentence, do this: Find the most significant action in the sentence (analyze). Figure out who is doing the action (the panel). Make the actor the subject of the sentence and the action the verb! Again, there are two payoffs here: Your reader will decode faster, and often your sentence will be shorter. Again, your goal is to be aware of passive voice and to contemplate whether there might not be more easily read (=decodeable) agent/action alternatives.

Don't try to kill all passive voice constructions. You may want them. That is, some sentences that are written in a passive voice may be useful. (Hmm... who wrote that last sentence? Do I care? Is this sentence passive? Do I want it to be?)

Personal Pronouns

In many forms of technical writing, use of personal pronouns may make stiff writing less so, often making it easier to read. Particularly when writing instructions (direct commands), use of you may help avoid awkward passive voice constructions. Note that sometimes you may be understood but not written. eg.
Bad: The shell of the eggs should be bisected on the edge of the cooking vessel and their contents decimated with a multipronged utensil.
Better: You should bisect the egg shells on the cooking vessel and decimate their contents with the multipronged utensil.
Best: Crack the eggs on the pan and scramble them with a fork.

Customs for the use of pronouns vary between various genres.

"Some writers of technical manuals have switched from the third person to the second person: instead of "the user should be aware that," they write "you should be aware that...., then you do this and next you do that." She also notes that despite trends toward greater informality in many forms of writing, "some articles and documents in technical, academic, and professional fields—law, some sciences, medicine, engineering, literature, history—continue to avoid first person pronounds and use other pronouns sparingly.

The style sheet of Renaissance Quarterly, for example, revised in 2002, specifies: 'Please avoid the use of 'I,' 'me,' and 'my' in the text of articles.'" I suggest that when you are speaking personally, "I note that..." is as appropriate and far friendlier that "The author notes that..." and to be preferred.

Agreement The pronouns I, we, he, she, they, and who change form depending on whether they function as a subject, object, or in another way (possessive). Possessive forms of personal pronouns do not use an apostrophe. It's is a contraction for it is. Its is a possessive.

The subjective case (I, you, he | she | it, we, you, and they) is used for compound subjects and subject complements.

{Don't believe it? Try the sentence with the pronouns by themselves: (She | Her) will star in the play; The lead performer is (he | him).}

The objective case (me, you, him | her | it, us, you, and them) is used for compound objects.

An appositive is a noun or pronoun which directly takes the place of another noun or pronoun in the same sentence. An appositive pronoun takes the case of the noun it replaces.

(practice exercises)

References