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CHAPTER X.

THE SENTENCE.

THUS far our study has dealt with materials and detached processes, waiving for the time the consideration of finished results. It is time now to take up this latter subject; and in the coming three forms of utterance, the Sentence, the Paragraph, and the Composition as a Whole, it will be treated through successive applications of what are essentially the same underlying principles, varying only in scale and scope. In the sentence, then, we reach the first complete organic product of thinking. As such, and as embodying on its scale the qualities necessary to effect the purpose of the whole work, the sentence may be regarded as the unit of style.1

Definition of the Sentence. A sentence is a combination of words expressing a single, complete thought.

However complex it may be — and it may attain a considerable degree of complexity-the thought of the sentence must be single, must with all its colorings and details leave on the reader's mind one focal impression; however restricted its range or inclusion, it must appear as a complete and finished utterance.

1 "For the sentence is the unit of style; and by the cadence and music, as well as by the purport and bearing, of his sentences, the master of style must stand or fall." — SAINTSBURY, Miscellaneous Essays, p. 110.—"From the arrangement of according letters, which is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure intellect, there is scarce a faculty in man but has been exercised. We need not wonder, then, if perfect sentences are rare, and perfect pages rarer."— STEVENSON, On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature, Works, Vol. xxii, p. 265.

NOTE. The typical sign of completeness is the period, the mark of a full-rounded declarative sentence. Other marks of end-punctuation, the exclamation mark, the interrogation mark, the dash, are really marks of incompleteness: the exclamation signifying rather an emotional outburst than a composed thought; the interrogation implying and requiring an answer to complete it; and the dash confessedly an abrupt dropping of the subject. Thus, while grammatically there may be exclamatory and interrogative as well as declarative sentences, from the point of view of rhetorical construction these are somewhat out of the literal order, being in fact expressions of emotional connotation; see above, pp. 95, 96.

I. ORGANISM OF THE SENTENCE.

Sentences have both a grammatical and a rhetorical organism: the grammatical having to do with the parts of speech, their offices and relations; the rhetorical dealing rather with the logical bearings and dependencies of the thought. With the grammatical organism our business at present is only indirect and casual; the assured mastery of it must, at this stage of study, be presumed. With the rhetorical organism of the sentence a writer must get the same intimate familiarity as with the grammatical; the sense of it, and of its requirements, must become ingrained in his mind; and, as accessory to this, he needs to form the habit of parsing his sentence rhetorically, settling its unitary and distributive relations, its main and tributary lines, as he goes along. No other habit or procedure in rhetoric can outweigh this in importance.

I.

Elements of Structure. lies all forms of composition, from the complete utterance of a thought, onward. ture, a structure framed on two elements. basic idea or term, what the assertion is about, and secondly the assertion or declaration itself, what is said about this.

The same essential structure undersentence, the first It is a dual struc

There is first the

These two elements are always present to guide and centralize the thinking; and whether we call them subject and predicate, as in the sentence, or topic and enlargement, as in the paragraph, or proposition and proof, as in a debate, or theme and treatment, as in an essay, is merely an incident of the scale and kind of production on which we are working.

The Framework. Our analysis of sentence structure, then, taking the grammatical core of substantive (¿.e. noun or pronoun) and verb, views it in the more logical light of subject and predicate the subject, in the large sense that about which something is said; the predicate, also liberally construed as that which is said about the subject. These, while in most cases modeled on the grammatical nucleus, are not the slaves of grammar; for instance, a subject, though typically a nominative, may for rhetorical distinction be put as the object of a verb, yet remain just as truly the thing about which an assertion is made; the predicate, likewise, though it be crowded into some sequential clause, or be in part left to implication, retains its essential character of information or statement about the subject. By their function it is, rather than by their form, that these elements are to be rhetorically interpreted; and, as preliminary to the skilful massing of his sentences, the writer should acquire the instinctive sense of what in his work is really the subject of discussion, whatever its syntax, and what is essentially predication or predicative

matter.

EXAMPLES. The following sentences, purposely chosen for their simplicity, will bring to light the essential subject-matter and predication, as distinct from the grammatical. The grammatical nucleus is put in small capitals.

"Our

"1

1. The rhetorical framework modeled on the grammatical core. earthly LIFE, then, GIVES PROMISE of what it does not accomplish." "HOMER, for the glory of whose birthplace none but the greatest cities

1 NEWMAN, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. iv, p. 216,

dare contend, Is alike THE HIGHEST AND THE EASIEST in poetry. HERODOTUS, who brought into Greece more knowledge of distant countries than any or indeed than all before him, IS THE PLAINEST AND GRACEFULEST in prose." ."1 In all these, if we ask what is talked about and what is asserted of it, the substantive and verb give the main clue.

2. The subject of remark grammatically disguised. "On seeking for some clue to the law underlying these current maxims, WE MAY SEE shadowed forth in many of them, the IMPORTANCE of economizing the reader's or hearer's attention." 2 Here the grammatical substantive, verb, and object give very little clue to what the sentence is about; its real subject of remark, economizing attention, is sent to the end as the object of a preposition. - The same is noticeable in the following: "There IS NOT, AND there NEVER WAS on this earth, a WORK of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church." 8 Here the subject of remark is the Roman Catholic Church, sent to the end again and put in a clause for distinction.

"4

3. The predicative matter grammatically disguised. "THIS IS A THOUGHT which will come upon us not always, but under circumstances.' Here the grammatical framework is as indicated above; the rhetorical is rather This thought will come. The predication is put into a which-clause. "The second POINT to be observed is that brightness of color is altogether inadmissible without purity and harmony." 195 Here the main predicative matter of the sentence is put in a sequential clause, being prepared for by a prospective clause: brightness is inadmissible is the real assertion.

In the sentence quoted from Landor above we might say the clauses that define Homer and Herodotus respectively ("for the glory of whose birthplace," etc., and "who brought into Greece," etc.) are part of the predicative matter tacked to the subject by relative clauses; they really supply one side of the distinction asserted of these authors.

What is true of the whole sentence is true in its turn of any constituent clause. By its subject or its connective its relation with the rest of the sentence is revealed, whether one of subordination or of coördination; but as soon as we get beyond this, in all its internal framework the clause is a

1 LANDOR, Imaginary Conversations, Vol. i, p. 94 (Diogenes and Plato).
2 SPENCER, Philosophy of Style, p. 11.

8 MACAULAY, Essay on Von Ranke's History of the Popes.
4 NEWMAN, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. iv, p. 217.
5 RUSKIN, Modern Painters, Vol. ii, p. 195.

complete sentence by itself, with the same problems of mass, order, and stress that obtain in the larger structure.

EXAMPLES. In the sentences quoted above, we come upon the following clausal frameworks: "it does not accomplish,” “none ... dare contend"; "who brought ... knowledge"; "which will come"; "brightness . . . is inadmissible."

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The Tributary Portions. In three main ways this sentence framework may take on tributary matter.

1. There is first the matter requisite to define and give proper setting to the subject. This, as the subject itself is a substantive, is adjectival in nature, that is, it fixes such limits and qualities of the subject as are needed for use in the sentence, and this it does in the form of word, or phrase, or clause.

2. Secondly, and with the same range of forms open to it, there is the matter requisite to expand and round out the predicate. This, so far as it centres about the verb, is adverbial in nature, giving accompaniments of time, place, conditions, manner, and the like. But as the verb may take an object, or be conjoined with a predicate noun, adjectival modifiers may be affixed to these as to the subject of the sentence.

3. Finally, the sentence itself, within the boundary of the same period, may take on another sentence, or more than one, so closely connected with it in idea that the pair or cluster add together to form a composite thought. In this case it is idle to speculate which is principal and which tributary; they have a coördinate relation.

It is to be remembered, moreover, that wherever there is a noun, whether in main sentence, clause, or phrase, and wherever there is a verb, whether in the form of principal verb, or infinitive, or participle, the question of modification is always open; and so the tributary tracts of the sentence may in turn have their tributaries, until the grammatical rami

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