I'd wholeheartedly agree on reserving judgment about the construction's
awkwardness. From the scans I've done on corpora, it's certainly not
rare in published writing (and yes, I know, Bulwer-Lytton got published
(a lot), so publication is a fallible measure of linguistic grace;
still, it can be used as a kind of basement measure). It is, I would
argue, substantively different from cases with the "according to"
construction, since the "In Xpro's[source], X says" format allows
stipulation of the source, while "According to X, Xpro says" adds no
real new information. In fact, learning how to use the former - in
moderation - allows students to vary the way in which they include
source citation material in research writing. If we were to discourage
all constructions that particular students overuse, we'd have very
little language left.
Bill Spruiell
[PS - except for the expressions "In our modern society" and "In America
today." Those are just evil, and are doubtless accelerating the melting
of the polar ice caps.]
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 2:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Syntax question
Herb, johanna,
I agree with both you guys, but we need to be careful about taking
this kind of editing out of context, the context of the text and the
context of the student's evolution as a writer.
Think about the following sequence as possible: "In Hrothgar's
speech to Beowulf, he gives warning of the corruption of the desire for
fame. In his actions, he shows a desire for fame of his own." (I know
I'm abusing Hrothgar unfairly. He's not a hypocrite.) In this case, the
marked theme opening may be positioning the writer for important
juxtapositions (or reinforcements) of meaning.
In the hands of a good writer, these openings can be very
purposeful, very powerful.
And I'm not sure they happen more in speech than in writing.
I don't remember the exact research on this, but wasn't it
traditional to discourage adverbial openings until someone (Francis
Christiansen?) found so many of them in the work of our best writers?
(My memory says as many as 40% of all sentences for some writers, but
I'm doing that from memory.) I remember it being given as an
undergraduate example of how handbooks can be misleading, and it helps
to look at the work of real writers.
"In the beginning, God created heaven and earth." I'm not sure "in
the beginning" isn't well chosen as a point of departure. I wouldn't
present this as an editing problem without looking at extended texts and
without looking at times and places where marked themes (anything other
than grammatical subject as sentence opener) are used well.
I know that writing tends to put more meaning into clauses than
speech does, but portioning out meaning is also sometimes very
effective.
"Give me liberty or death" is not, to me, nearly as effective as
"Give me liberty or give me death." The second gives proper weight to
liberty. Form echoes meaning.
Peter Elbow is working on a project he calls "Enlisting the virtues
of speech," and Joseph Williams covers some of that ground in his Ten
Easy Lessons... books.
Lexically dense, highly nominalized texts are often almost
unreadable.
Sometimes the worst advice you can give a student is to emulate
academic writing.
Craig
Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote:
Johanna,
I was trying to find a way to express my preference for the name as
subject and pronoun in the topic structure, and you've done that nicely.
You're right that this sort of topic-comment structure is one that shows
up often with inexperienced writers, but it's also one that is more
difficulty to explain and guard against if you don't have vocabulary and
concepts, like topic, comment, and subject, to work with, not to mention
pronoun and antecedent.
Herb
Subject: Re: Syntax question
"In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he gives warning of the corruption of
the desire for fame."
It's interesting to know that the prohibition on this kind of cataphor
is invented. I would object to the sentence on stylistic grounds. The
two potential male antecedents should be avoided, even though the
context makes clear which one "he" refers to. Apart from that, my
problem with the sentence is that the sentence is a typical
topic-comment structure. These occur with annoying frequency in the
writing of my students. I believe they are an instance of speech-like
structure being transferred to writing. Students tend to spread
information out over the clause more than is necessary for a reader. A
more-compact structure would be
"In his speech to Beowulf, Hrothgar gives warning of the corruption of
the desire for fame." or
"Hrothgar, in his speech to Beowulf, gives warning of the corruption of
the desire for fame."
Both of these place the proper name in subject position, which is
better stylistically if Hrothgar is the current topic.
Similar structures that occur in my students' writing are along the
following lines:
"In Deborah Tannen's book 'You Just Don't Understand', she claims that
... " or, even worse,
"In the book 'You Just Don't Understand', it states that ..."
The "dummy subject" of the latter example just adds words.
Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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