Building Great Sentences (8 page)

Now let's try to think about the technical aspects of the cumulative sentence in somewhat more sophisticated terms. Remember that Christensen's theory of the cumulative sentence developed from John Erskine's argument that writing is largely a process of adding modifiers, making a point “not by subtracting as though you sharpened a pencil, but by adding.” This insight led Erskine to his conclusion that “the modifier is the essential part of any sentence.” With its emphasis on modifying phrases, the cumulative sentence might be thought of as a major kind of adjectival sentence, to use the term suggested by Josephine Miles. The main feature of this sentence pattern is that it packages modifiers as unbound words or phrases—that is, in ways that will usually allow them to appear in the sentence in different positions, rather than bound to the word or words they modify. Accordingly, the cumulative modifying phrase may open, close, or appear in the middle of the sentence. For example, given “baby” as the object of modification and “crying loudly” as the modifying phrase, we might construct a sentence with that phrase in the initial slot, “Crying loudly, the baby announced her distress”; the final slot, “The baby announced her distress, crying loudly”; or the medial slot, “The baby, crying loudly, announced her distress.”

Location, Location, Location: Left-Branching, Right-Branching, and Mid-Branching Modifiers

If the modifying phrase comes before the base clause or to the left of it on the page, it's called a left-branching sentence. If the modifying phrase comes after the base clause or to the right of it on the page, it is called a right-branching sentence, and if the modifying phrase comes in the middle of the base clause, it is called mid-branching. What's important here is not the terminology, but the knowledge that a truly free modifying phrase can be placed in each of these three positions. That's the point of calling them free modifiers—they are free to be moved around. Of course, we are also free to mix and match the positions of free modifiers, since we can write cumulative sentences that feature modifying phrases in all three positions at once. For example, “Having cleared customs, the elegantly dressed old man hailed a cab, a gleeful smile on his face, instructing its driver to take him to the nearest casino.”

Another Small Caution: “Misplaced” Modifiers

It is important to note, however, that cumulative sentences featuring modifying phrases in the initial or medial positions can be risky. Initial modifying phrases run the risk of becoming “misplaced modifiers.” We have a misplaced modifier—sometimes called a dangling modifier or a dangling participle—when the modifying phrase doesn't match up with what it tells about. The classic example of a misplaced modifier is: “Having eaten lunch, the bus left the station.” Obviously the bus did not eat lunch, but that's what this sentence suggests. The problem is that the modifying phrase doesn't really have a logical object of modification in the base clause. People eat lunch. Buses don't. More specifically, the people who were riding on the bus ate lunch, but the base clause, “The bus left the station,” doesn't mention people, doesn't mention bus riders, doesn't mention anyone who could conceivably eat anything.

What this sentence fails to do is to provide logical agents who could be modified by the phrase “having eaten lunch.” In other words, the base clause lacks any clue as to who did the eating. Once we figure out that the sentence fails to provide a logical object of modification for the modifying phrase, we realize that the term that is usually applied to this mistake—misplaced modifier—is itself not really correct. “Misplaced” suggests that the sentence can be corrected simply by moving the modifying phrase to the correct or logical place in the sentence, but no such place exists. “The bus left the station, having eaten lunch” doesn't make a bit more sense, nor does “The bus, having eaten lunch, left the station.” The problem with this sentence is not placement of the modifying phrase, but that there's nothing for that phrase to modify.

To clean this sentence up, we would need to add a word or modifying phrase that would provide an appropriate object of modification. In the terms I've suggested, such additions provide something that the modifying phrase can answer a question about; in this case, who ate lunch? Consequently, a satisfying and logical cumulative sentence might read, “The passengers having eaten lunch, the bus left the station.”

Frequently a misplaced or dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence. Here again, what is called a “misplaced modifier” is not “misplaced” at all, since there is no other place in the sentence where it makes better sense. The problem in this case is that there is nothing in the sentence it
can
modify. It needs to modify an agent, someone doing something, but no agent is specified in the sentence. For example, “After running the race so well, losing was a disappointment.” Cumulative sentences are all about specificity, and both the agents responsible for action in a cumulative sentence and the objects of action must be clearly identified. We need to know who lost, since “losing” obviously did not run the race. We might think of dangling modifiers as participial phrases that are all dressed up with no place to go, since there's nothing specifically present in the sentence for them to point to.

So-called misplaced modifiers can occur anywhere in the sentence, but for some reason,
starting
a sentence with an initial modifying phrase (composing left-branching sentences) seems particularly to lead writers to make this mistake. So whenever you begin a sentence with a modifying phrase, be sure that the base clause contains a word or words that phrase can logically modify and, if possible, put that object of modification as close to the start of the base clause as possible.

There is also a risk we need to be aware of when we put modifying phrases in the medial position, interposing them between the subject of the base clause and its verb. If we separate subject from verb by only a single modifying word or phrase, there's no problem. However, if we start dumping modifying phrases in the middle of a base clause, we run the risk of either making the sentence hard to follow or transforming it into a suspensive sentence, where delaying its completion becomes the dominant stylistic aspect, sacrificing the strong sense of cumulative movement for a sense that the sentence is putting off whatever may be at its end, either to build suspense or to add maximum emphasis to its final word. Here's an example of what can happen: “The bus, an ancient yellow relic, a vehicle so old and undependable that even our strapped-for-cash school district would no longer use it, a monument to questionable design in its beginnings, and of poor maintenance near the end of its service, left the station.” There's nothing really wrong with that sentence, and it is grammatically cumulative, but its cumulative modifying phrases add motion with no movement, its rhythm somehow stuck, and the reason for using cumulative form not at all clear.

Enough Caution: Back to Effective Cumulative Options

Now with these cautions out of the way, let's return to thinking about cumulative sentences that work! We've seen that the free modifying phrases that distinguish cumulative syntax can come at the beginning of the sentence, before the base clause, in the initial or left-branching position; in the medial or mid-branching position between the subject and the verb of the base clause; at the end of the sentence, after the base clause, in the final or right-branching position; or in some combination of these three positions. It may help to think of this aspect of cumulative form as being syntagmatic, a term we've previously applied to the way in which a sentence unfolds its meaning horizontally to the eye of the reader, from the left of the page to the right.

Location and Level: Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Aspects

There's also what can be called a paradigmatic or vertical aspect of cumulative sentences. This aspect is conceptual or logical, rather than visual, as it focuses on the discursive relationship between and among cumulative free modifying phrases, irrespective of their placement. Or, to put this another way, the syntagmatic aspect or characteristic of cumulative sentences is strictly
formal
, determined by where a modifying phrase is placed, while the paradigmatic aspect is strictly
functional
, determined by what each modifying phrase does.

Each cumulative modifying phrase means that the sentence takes another step, but we need to realize that each step itself has two aspects or dimensions or purposes. Each step moves the sentence toward the period at the sentence's end (a syntagmatic aspect), but each step also adds a new level of detail or explanation, much like the way the ladder of abstraction can move us toward more specific word choice (a paradigmatic aspect).

Consider the sentence “Having sold all of her boxes of cookies, the elated Girl Scout went home.”
In syntagmatic terms
, we would describe this cumulative sentence as having its modifying phrase, “Having sold all of her boxes of cookies,” in the initial or left-branching position.
In paradigmatic terms
, we would describe this cumulative sentence as having two levels, the first being the base clause, the second being its single modifying phrase “Having sold all of her boxes of cookies.” Each level of a cumulative sentence adds to its information, making the sentence both more specific and more intellectually satisfying—so far, so good.

Keeping Track of Multiple Levels

But now we need to look at another example that may complicate things again. Consider a more extended or elaborated version of our Girl Scout cookie sentence. Instead of just one modifying phrase, “Having sold all of her boxes of cookies,” let's give our reader more information. Let's say “Having sold all of her boxes of cookies, the elated Girl Scout went home, so excited she could barely explain her success to her mother.” In syntagmatic terms, we now have a sentence with a cumulative modifying phrase in both the initial and the final position, but in paradigmatic terms, we now have a sentence with two second-level modifying phrases.

Let's try to diagram this relation using the simple diagramming scheme I have been using to indicate the logical relationships of modifying phrases in a sentence. Remember, in this visual scheme, the base clause of the sentence is always the first level, and we indicate this by starting at our left margin and putting a (1) before the base clause, wherever it appears in the sentence. Any modifying phrase that modifies part or all of the base clause is the second level, and we indicate this by indenting and putting a (2) before that modifying phrase, as well as before however many other modifying phrases there may be that also modify part of or all of the base clause. Accordingly, we could visually represent our original sentence as:

(2) Having sold all of her boxes of cookies,

(1) the elated Girl Scout went home.

And our extended sentence would look like this:

(2) Having sold all of her boxes of cookies,

(1) the elated Girl Scout went home,

(2) so excited she could barely explain her success to her mother.

As long as our modifying phrases all point to or modify part or all of the base clause, we just repeat this pattern, no matter how many second-level phrases there are. For instance, we could have:

(2) Having sold all of her boxes of cookies,

(2) having knocked on every door in her neighborhood,

(1) the elated Girl Scout went home,

(2) so excited she could barely explain her success to her mother,

(2) so proud of her accomplishment she immediatelywanted to get more cookies to sell.

Coordinate Cumulative Sentence Levels

We still have a two-level cumulative, but now with four second-level modifying phrases, and here's where we need a new term. We call a cumulative sentence with more than one second-level modifying phrase a coordinate cumulative sentence. All of its modifying phrases point back to the base clause, and any one of them would make sense if moved to any of the three syntagmatic positions: the initial (before the base clause), the medial (in the middle of the base clause), or the final (just after the base clause). So we could rearrange the steps of the above sentence in more ways than I'm about to demonstrate, but just to give you an idea of the possibilities, we might write:

(1) The elated Girl Scout went home,

(2) having sold all of her boxes of cookies,

(2) having knocked on every door in her neighborhood,

(2) so excited she could barely explain her success to her mother,

(2) so proud of her accomplishment she immediately wanted to get more cookies to sell.

Or we could do it this way:

(2) Having sold all of her boxes of cookies,

(2) having knocked on every door in her neighborhood,

(2) so excited she could barely explain her success to her mother,

(2) so proud of her accomplishment she immediately wanted to get more cookies to sell,

(1) the elated Girl Scout went home.

And there are all sorts of variations that would be in between these extremes, such as:

(2) Having sold all of her boxes of cookies,

(2) having knocked on every door in her neighborhood,

(2) so excited she could barely explain her success to her mother,

(1) the elated Girl Scout went home,

(2) so proud of her accomplishment she immediately wanted to get more cookies to sell.

No matter how much we rearrange the syntagmatic order of this sentence's steps, the paradigmatic order remains the same. It's a two-level sentence, with four second-level modifying phrases. So why is this important to know? To begin with, we need to call this pattern something because cumulative syntax also makes possible two other patterns of logical relationships among base clauses and modifying phrases, and each pattern is more effective in some situations and for some purposes than it is for others. The three paradigmatic patterns of the cumulative sentence are called coordinate, subordinate, and mixed.