English grammar - Roger Berry 2012
A11.2 Reasons for redesigning sentences: three principles
A11 Redesigning sentences
Section A. Introduction
Look at the following sentence:
Amy had never seen in stores underwear that would fit someone who was the size of fat Bev.
What is unusual about the word order here? Can you describe what is happening and explain why?
The above activity shows one reason for changing word order in English: to place a long noun phrase at the end of a sentence. This is sometimes called the principle of ’end weight’: anything ’heavy’ should be placed at the end.
The general aim for using an unusual word order - apart from the cases of grammatical expediency listed above - is to make communication more effective. Thus it makes sense to have long clause elements at the end so that the clause structure can be quickly established. Compare these two sentences:
A sense of doom that affected him all day followed him.
He was followed by a sense of doom that affected him all day.
Here the use of the passive in the second sentence allows a short subject to precede the verb and the long noun phrase (a sense of doom that followed him all day) to be placed last, whereas in the first example the listener or reader has to wait till almost the end of the sentence before finding out what its structure is.
Another reason for changing word order is to achieve ’end focus’, that is, to place the most important element at the end. This is the element that has the so-called ’nuclear stress’ in speech. It may be an element that receives stress because it is being contrasted;
I’m not talking about soccer. (I’m talking about American football.)
Sometimes it is necessary to have more than one focus in a sentence. Then a number of devices such as fronting and clefting (see below) can be used to make use of the beginning in addition to the end of sentences.
A third principle behind the arrangement of sentences is the ’information principle’. As a general rule information at the start of a sentence in English is taken to be ’given’ or old, whereas that at the end is regarded as new - particularly if it is focused on. A typical pattern in a text might be where a sentence starts with given information followed by new; then in the next sentence, this new information becomes the given information to which more new information is attached. In the next two sentences the division between given and new is shown by a slash (/):
They / have found a new way of distilling essential oils.
This discovery / could eventually lead to savings in production costs.
This organisation of sentences helps with the ’cohesion’ of texts (see B11).
One more reason for using the passive (see A6) is to bring an original object to the front of a clause where it is understood as given information:
Macbeth was written by Shakespeare.
Here, ’Macbeth’ would have already figured in the discussion and ’Shakespeare’ is the new piece of information. To say Shakespeare wrote Macbeth would have different implications.
However, the given/new pattern does not always exist; it is quite possible for there to be no given information in a sentence; see ’existential there’ below.
These three principles are not hard and fast rules, and sometimes they are in conflict with one another. And there are other reasons, for example, to have the same (or similar) ’topic’ in initial position in succeeding sentences. The concept of topic is discussed in the reading in D11; it is called ’theme’ there (though some grammarians distinguish the two).