Ed,
   What constitutes a "given" in a discourse context is a very rich and interesting area and one I don't think has been adequately investigated. (I hope somebody can correct me if I'm wrong.) On the surface of it, I would say these subject shifts are problematic, but with the full sentences in front of us, I suspect those problems would go away. Are all these mathematicians? (Napolean as well?) Would the reader be expected to know this?
   Here's a possible parallel example with missing predicates. "Many left handed hitters have done well at Fenway Park. Wade Boggs.......... Carl Yastremski..........Ted Williams...... Now Jacoby Ellsbury..... "
   This sort of shift requires that the reader know that these are all left handed hitters who played (or are playing) for the Red Sox and that the stadium they play home games in is Fenway Park.
   Given can be created by discourse. As a matter of fact, Langacker uses the term"Current Discourse Space" to emphasize that it is constantly being updated as the text moves along. It is also created by shared knowledge. A writer, of course, often guesses wrong on both sides--either explaining too much or not enough--for some readers.
   Much of the pressure of nominalization also comes from the build-up of meaning within a discipline or a text. "Non-restrictive post-nominal modifiers should be set off by commas" presupposes that the complex noun phrase that opens the sentence is already clear from context or shared understanding. What I find is that my students cannot read a typical handbook because they haven't been bought up to speed with the terminology and (more important) underlying concepts.
   Pulling given from one sentence to the next often requires the ability to build a complex noun phrase (or other alternatives). Where I differ with Susan is probably seeing coherence, not variation, as the primary goal.

Craig

Edgar Schuster wrote:

[log in to unmask]" type="cite">

I just happened to be reading "A Law of Acceleration" by Henry Adams and have come across two paragraphs that have some relation to what we have been discussed on the issue of varying sentence openings and coherence.

The first paragraph begins with "Thus" and the sentence concludes "only the mathematician could help." Here are the first words (NPs) of the remaining six sentences:

            La Place

            Watt

            Volta and Benjamin Franklin

            Dalton

            Napoleon I

            No one

The other starts with the word "Nothing." The remaining five sentences begin:

            Thought

            Power

            Man

            Forces

            So long as the rates of progress held good, . . . .

Comments?

Ed S

On May 27, 2009, at 8:02 PM, Jordan Earl wrote:

Can I throw in a question here? The revised version seems to me to create a new problem... we have only one sentence with a varying start now, and in it, the subject is a pronoun referring back to an adjective in the previous sentence. I realize that this phenomenon is acceptable in spoken speech and probably happens a lot in writing, but I'm wondering if others out there teaching would point this out to students or let it go...

<Landon is comparing Jamie’s weight to leaves falling. She has become so sick that she has lost a lot of weight, and he has really started to notice it.>

It seems to me that *she* would work well if Landon were female; alternately, one might begin the second sentence with *Jamie* and solve the problem, as the 2nd *she* would then be clear.

Curious what others think --

--Jordan

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