Johanna,
I had indeed the pronoun/antecedent order reversed in my rendition of
"the original sentence," and was thinking of it as "In his speech to
Beowulf, Hrothgar gives...." Mea culpa.
Now, however, I'm wondering why one order produces a perception of
redundancy while the other doesn't -- is it the information gap produced
by the cataphoric arrangement in that latter version, or is it the
absence of the potential for the kind of ambiguity that you pointed out?
The cataphoric type certainly does occur in mature writing.
I'm staying agnostic about whether the anaphoric type never occurs in
polished prose; wider context may have more of an effect than the local
structure itself. Although your point about ambiguity still holds, I
think the following would not sound *quite* as bad:
"In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he sounds resigned, but in his speech
to Aethelflaethet, he adds a note of urgency."
The cataphoric version still sounds better, though:
"In his speech to Beowulf, Hrothgar sounds resigned, but in his speech
to Aethelflaethet, he adds a note of urgency."
In the full original version ("In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he gives
warning of the corruption of the desire for fame"), the
"warning....fame" portion is awkward as well. I wonder if that's
intensifying people's reactions to the first part.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
PS -- Yes, I made up Aethelflaethet.
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Johanna Rubba
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 5:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Syntax question
Let's clear up a few things here -- the original sentence under
discussion was precisely the kind Bob and I have been talking about. I
don't have it exactly, but the name appeared first:
"In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he ... "
I objected only to the repeition of reference to Hrothgar, once via
proper name and again via pronoun. I have no objection to introductory
adverbials; they are fine orienters and feature in good writing.
My main objection is stylistic -- as Bob notes, I doubt such structures
appear much in mature writing. Novice writers spread info over excess
syntactic units in other ways, too. However, there is a slight
possibility of confusion, depending on context. The "he" might refer to
a person mentioned in the speech; the proximity of male-marked
"Beowulf" might also distract the rapidly-processing brain as it seeks
antecedents for "he" (let's not forget that nouns nearer the verb than
the "simple subject" are the prime culprits in subject-verb agreement
errors). The context is not forgiving in the student examples I have
seen. If it were, as I have said before, I would not even notice the
structure as infelicitous.
As to topic-comment, this terminology appears in some writing manuals
with reference to structures such as "My father, he seldom votes". They
are labeled outright ungrammatical, which I find a little extreme. I
view the Beowulf example as similar. Topic-comment syntax is standard
in some languages. A rough example I recall from my
structure-of-Chinese course is "Elephant, nose is long", which would be
translated as "Elephants have long noses". I can imagine a novice
writer writing something like "As far as elephants, they have long
noses".
Considering introductory adverbials "topical" is not standard in
discussions of syntax or writing, so far as I know. They are seen as
orienting devices, and also can be connectors to what went before.
I occasionally have students in my 300-level class who have never had
to write a term paper before. In the main, those who have written
papers have not been well-trained, or perhaps not held to high
standards. A large number of them are going to be teaching writing, if
they obtain their teaching credentials. Unfortunately, my class is not
a writing class. It is a content class, and the students hand in a
final draft of their term papers. For this reason, I advise them on how
to check their papers for aspects of mature style before handing them
in. I also urge them to use our writing lab and provide a list of
typical problems.
Lastly, with tongue in cheek and apologies to Bill McCleary, an
illustration of how the structures under discussion slip into
less-formal writing ...
" For students who have not written a term paper before, they are
overwhelmed."
: )
Johanna Rubba, Assoc. Prof., Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93047
Tel. 805.756.2184
Dept. Tel. 805.756.6374
Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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