Building Great Sentences (9 page)

Subordinate Cumulative Sentence Levels

In coordinate patterns, all modifying phrases refer back to the base clause. In subordinate patterns, each modifying phrase refers to the immediately preceding clause or phrase, and we can mix these two patterns by adding subordinate levels to coordinate patterns, or coordinate levels to subordinate patterns, with one or the other pattern predominating.

So another reason it's helpful to recognize these patterns is that all three show us how to add levels of new meaning to our sentences. You'll remember that a coordinate cumulative sentence looks like this when diagrammed:

(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.

The subordinate pattern goes a little bit differently.

(1) The elated Girl Scout went home,

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

(3) those inescapable icons of capitalism,

(4) its methods and assumptions hardwiring our children to value the power of selling in almost their every activity,

(5) methods and assumptions championed by some and resisted by others.

You'll notice that both of these sentences take four steps after the base clause, but each step in the first sentence just gives it another second level, while each step in the second sentence adds a new level, ultimately developing the sentence through five levels of specificity.

Mixed Cumulative Sentence Levels

The majority of cumulative sentences offer some combination of coordinate and subordinate levels. Of course, for the mixed version of a cumulative sentence, we could get:

(1) The elated Girl Scout went home,

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

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

(3) those inescapable icons of capitalism,

(3) those irresistible sugar bombs,

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

(3) recognizing some who came to their doors as friends of her parents,

(3) remembering some houses where she had gotten particularly wonderful Halloween treats,

(4) figuring both categories of potential buyers would find it hard to say no to a cute little girl participating in one of America's best-established cultural rituals.

What Each Kind of Cumulative Sentence Does Best

Coordinate levels can modify the entire base clause or focus on one of its elements. Given a base clause containing a subject, a verb, and a direct object, the coordinate modifying levels may sharpen or focus on the whole clause, on its subject, on its verb, or on its object. Coordinate levels keep the sentence running in place as more information is added to its load. And of course, if we add more information to the base clause—if the base clause contains more than just a subject, a verb, and an object—we give ourselves more targets for modification, more opportunities for adding modifying phrases. Instead of “He drove the car,” we might have “He carefully drove the rented car back toward town,” each additional word providing us with the opportunity for further modification.

Subordinate levels move the focus of the sentence forward, moving from general to specific, zooming in like a movie camera. They can also break a whole into its constituent parts, accomplishing the same end as do some uses of the colon. Subordinate levels can also lead us into new thoughts, nudging us to be ever more specific, to refine and/or detail whatever we have just written. Consider the ways these sentences shift our attention from what seems to be the initial concern of the sentence to an entirely different subject:

He drove carefully, his thoughts drifting back to other trips, fondly remembered Sunday outings, outings made wonderful by his mother and father, warm and humorous parents he would never see again.

They drove carefully, he with hands on the wheel in the prescribed positions at ten and two o'clock, his eyes riveted to the road, a road almost invisible beyond the sheets of rain that pelted the windshield, she checking and rechecking the map, calling out town names and possible landmarks, landmarks neither could possibly see, both growing more tense and worried by the minute, neither able to say anything soothing or encouraging, their vacation dissolving into a nightmare of bad weather and wrong turns.

However, these subordinate levels can also run amok, taking us away from our subject, diverting attention to subsidiary, incidental, even irrelevant details, details for which we have no real need or use, being ever mindful of our reader's time and patience, patience we run the risk of sorely taxing with sentences such as this one, sentences that seem to go on and on, moving us further and further from what we started to say, making the subordinate form seem more and more aimless. Now, what was I saying?

The main appeal and power of coordinate cumulative construction comes from its distinctive rhythm and very simple logical relations among the steps the sentence takes. The coordinate cumulative sentence tends to be repetitive, both in sound and in sense, and as Gertrude Stein rightly pointed out, repetition in language takes on an insistent quality. Moreover, the coordinate cumulative sentence is like a car stopped at a stoplight, revving its motor. All the new information added by each coordinate level adds detail to or helps explain the base clause, but never moves it forward. Call it motion without movement. The coordinate syntax is essentially static, going over the same information again and again, refining it or clarifying it with each new pass or each new modifying phrase, backfilling rather than moving forward. And yet a coordinate sentence whose modifying phrases follow a sequence can seem to move, indeed can display what I think is the most seductive prose rhythm of cumulative form.

Christensen singles out a sentence from E. B. White to illustrate this strength: “We caught two bass, hauling them in briskly as though they were mackerel, pulling them over the side of the boat in a businesslike manner without any landing net, and stunning them with a blow on the back of the head.” I love the sound of this sentence and I love the way it reminds me of that John Steinbeck discussion of two ways of looking at the Mexican sierra. This is clearly a sentence that evokes the experiential relationship between fish and fisherman, rather than resorting to labeling the dead, stiff, formalin-smelling fish by counting its spines.

The main appeal of subordinate cumulative construction comes from its ability to advance the sentence into new territory, making it particularly effective when used to describe a process or to follow something that unfolds in time. As opposed to the rigid and unmovable logic of the coordinate cumulative sentence, where every new modifying phrase ties back to the base clause, the subordinate cumulative sentence is loosey-goosey and can move on to new information. Of course, as I mentioned before, that freedom to move forward can reach a point of diminishing returns, when or if subordinate modifying phrases move so far away from the base clause that it looks as if the sentence has run wild.

It turns out it's actually hard to find “pure” examples of subordinate cumulative sentences, where every new modifying phrase adds a new level to the sentence. Indeed, Christensen only came up with a couple of examples of pure subordinate construction, although his first example, from Sinclair Lewis, is quite impressive:

(1) He dipped his hands in the bichloride solution and shook them,

(2) a quick shake,

(3) fingers down,

(4) like the fingers of a pianist above the keys.

That's a four-level subordinate cumulative sentence.

Pure subordinate cumulative sentences, particularly those that develop through more than three levels, are difficult to find, in part because the circumstances that call for such a pure construction are as rare as they are hard to imagine. Accordingly, most subordinate cumulative sentences are really just dominantly or primarily subordinate, rather than exclusively so, as we can see in this sentence from Toni Morrison: “The clarinets had trouble because the brass was cut so fine, not lowdown the way they love to do it, but high and fine like a young girl singing by the side of a creek, passing time, her ankles cold in the water.”

The main appeal of mixed cumulative construction is that it combines the strength of both coordinate and subordinate forms, allowing the sentence to move forward in time and open up new ideas, while also maintaining its intensity and focus. Here's a mixed cumulative sentence from Joseph Heller that shows what I mean: “He worked without pause, taking the faucet apart, spreading all the tiny pieces out carefully, counting and then studying each one interminably as though he had never seen anything remotely similar before, and then reassembling the whole small apparatus, over and over and over again, with no loss of patience or interest, no sign of fatigue, no indication of ever concluding.”

The real master of mixed cumulative rhythms is F. Scott Fitzgerald, as we can hear in the following stunning sentences from
The Great Gatsby
:

Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare and to be marveled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot out those five years of unwavering devotion.

A Quick Review

In this chapter, we've looked at coordinate cumulative sentences where all the modifying phrases point back to the base clause, and any one of which makes sense if moved just before or just after the base clause. These coordinate cumulatives can be thought of as two-level sentences, with all of their second-level modifying phrases pointing back to the first level of the base clause. If we visually represent coordinate cumulative sentences, numbering their levels, they look like this:

(1) He grabbed her hand,

(2) his heart pounding,

(2) his knees shaking,

(2) his head spinning,

(2) his palms sweating,

(2) his fright slowly fading away.

We've seen subordinate cumulative sentences where the modifying phrases are locked in place below or after the level of the sentence they modify, with modifying phrases after the second level each taking the phrase before it to a new level of information or explanation. If we visually represent subordinate cumulative sentences, numbering their levels, they look like this, their levels looking much like stair steps:

(1) His business plan was a joke,

(2) little more than a childish dream, first formed when he was eight,

(3) old enough to realize the advantage of having lots of money,

(4) advantages such as being able to buy every comic book in the store,

(5) the comic store itself representing to his young mind fabulous success.

We've also seen mixed cumulative sentences, where some modifying phrases follow the coordinate pattern and some follow the subordinate pattern. If we visually represent mixed cumulative sentences, numbering their levels, they look like this:

(1) Cumulative sentences can take any number of forms,

(2) detailing both frozen or static scenes and moving processes,

(2) their insistent rhythm always asking for another modifying phrase,

(3) allowing us to achieve ever-greater degrees of specificity and precision,

(4) a process of focusing the sentence in much the same way a movie camera can focus and refocus on a scene,

(5) zooming in for a close-up to reveal almost microscopic detail,

(5) panning back to offer a wide-angle panorama,

(5) offering new angles or perspectives from which to examine a scene or consider an idea.

Understanding the way each of these three cumulative patterns works makes it easier for us to write extended cumulative sentences. Understanding the concept of sentence levels can be very important, immediately giving writers reachable goals for improving their writing. It may be a bit of an oversimplification, but generally speaking, one mark of inexperienced or ineffective writing is that it relies heavily on sentences of only one or two levels. Just adding one new level of information to our sentences, whether the modifying phrase we add follows the coordinate or the subordinate pattern, means that our sentences will contain more information, more detail, better explanation. In short, adding even a single new level to our characteristic sentences will make them more effective, both in terms of their sound and in terms of their sense.

Next Steps

This chapter offered a number of cumulative sentences diagrammed to show the logical relationships between and among their base clauses and modifying phrases that were both coordinate and subordinate. Just to get the feel of the way these patterns work, see if you can construct some new sentences using base clauses you provide, but then providing modifying phrases that fit the relationships indicated by the numbers in some of the sentences I've diagrammed. For example, think of that E. B. White fishing sentence (“We caught two bass, hauling them in briskly as though they were mackerel, pulling them over the side of the boat in a businesslike manner without any landing net, and stunning them with a blow on the back of the head”). If we think of it purely in terms of its form, it would be indicated by this diagram:

(1) Base clause,

(2) Modifying phrase adding information about the base clause,