The appropriate way to position subordinate clauses and phrases

The serious student of writing in English soon discovers that formal expository writing and newspaper journalism differ profoundly in their approach to subordination and word order. Formal exposition like the essay uses the “upright pyramid” mode, meaning that it starts with contextual or foundation ideas first and builds up to the conclusion—an approach that has the effect of having the more important information presented later instead of earlier at the sentence level and in the composition as a whole. In contrast, newswriting uses the so-called “inverted pyramid” mode of presenting information—it generally tells the reader the conclusion first, follows it with the most important supporting information, then continues the story by giving aspects of its background in an order of diminishing importance. This different approach to subordination and word order normally confuses a lot of beginning writers, and their inability to recognize the difference often results in badly constructed sentences and confusing compositions as well.

It was for this reason that I wrote a two-part essay, “Subordination and word order in English,” for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in February 2009. By discussing the differences between expository writing and news writing, I hoped to help writers in general and entry-level journalists in particular routinely avoid the often serious problems in grammar, semantics, and logic that they sometimes unknowingly commit in their day-to-day writing. This time, for the benefit of Forum members and guests, I have combined the two-part essay into just one for posting in this week’s edition of the Forum. (October 16, 2010)

Subordination and word order in English

We all know that in English, the main clause of a sentence is generally more important than a subordinate clause or phrase, but many of you must have wondered which position is most appropriate for a subordinate clause or phrase—up front, at the tail end, or elsewhere in the sentence?

Consider this sentence from an Agence France-Presse news dispatch, for instance: “Resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations, in what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition.”

Here, of course, it’s obvious that the main clause is “resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations,” and that the subordinate element is “in what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition.”

But what about positioning that subordinate element up front instead? The construction seems to read just as well: “In what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition, resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.” And the meaning also stays perfectly intact if the subordinate element is placed neatly within the main clause: “Resource-hungry nations, in what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition, are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.”

So, we might as well ask once and for all, what’s the definitive rule for positioning subordinate clauses and phrases?

There are two general grammatical principles for conveying the relative importance of ideas in a sentence. The first, which I have already invoked above, is that ideas expressed in main clauses are generally more important than those in subordinate ones. This rule is, of course, so self-evident that it doesn’t merit further discussion. But the second rule is likely to throw many newspaper reporters and newspaper readers off balance, for it says so counterintuitively that an idea or information given later in a sentence is usually more important than those given earlier.

Indeed, following this second rule, it would seem that by being back-shifted in the sentence I have given as an example, the subordinate element “in what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition” assumes more importance than the main clause, “resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.”

But this clearly contradicts the first rule, which says that ideas expressed in main clauses are generally more important than those in subordinate clauses and phrases. If we were to scrupulously follow the two rules, in fact, the optimal position of the subordinate clause in that sentence would be up front: “In what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition, resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.”

So why then does the Agence France-Presse lead sentence seemingly violate the twin rules on subordination and word order?

The reason is this: newspaper journalism differs profoundly from formal exposition when it comes to indicating the relative importance of ideas in a sentence. As we all know, the typical news story uses the so-called “inverted pyramid” mode of presenting information. This approach to storytelling tells the reader the conclusion first, follows it with the most important supporting information, then continues the story by giving aspects of its background in an order of diminishing importance.

In contrast, formal exposition uses the “upright pyramid” mode, meaning that it starts with contextual or foundation ideas first and builds up to the conclusion. It is therefore not surprising that in formal expository writing, the more important information in a sentence—and in the exposition as a whole for that matter—tends to be presented later instead of earlier.

This front-shifting, of course, follows the general rule in English subordination and word order that information given later in a sentence is usually more important than that given earlier. Thus, in formal exposition, the subordinate element in that sentence given as an example above normally gets front-shifted as follows: “In what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition, resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.”

As a stand-alone construction, the above sentence that front-shifts the subordinate element is semantically equivalent to the earlier sentence that back-shifts that same subordinate element. There’s hardly any difference in their meaning. However, when writers back-shift subordinate clauses and phrases indiscriminately, as so often happens in straight-news reporting, very serious problems in semantics and logic can arise.

Indeed, injudicious back-shifting often produces misplaced modifiers, those improperly positioned words, phrases, or clauses that make sentences sound awkward, confusing, or downright absurd and illogical.

Consider the following three problematic lead sentences from recent news stories:

(1) “Half of Metro Manila may have to wait a while longer before enjoying the benefits of having a wastewater treatment facility after regulators deferred the increase in rates.”

Here, the back-shifting of the subordinate clause “after regulators deferred the increase in rates” makes it nonsensically modify the phrase “having a wastewater treatment facility.” The correct, logical position of that subordinate clause is, of course, up front in that sentence, where it can modify the whole main clause instead: “After regulators deferred the increase in water rates, half of Metro Manila may have to wait a while longer before it can enjoy the benefits of having a wastewater treatment facility.”

(2) “The spokesman did not disclose the details of the operation to ensure the safety of the hostages.”

Here, the backshifting of the prepositional phrase “to ensure the safety of the hostages” makes it wrongly modify the noun “operation,” giving the sentence a cockeyed, absurd sense. The intended sense clearly emerges when that prepositional phrase is front-shifted: “To ensure the safety of the hostages, the spokesman did not disclose the details of the operation.”

(3) “Around 190 solons are expected to support and petition for the immediate passage of a measure seeking to rehabilitate and utilize the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant when Congress resumes session on Monday.”

Here, the back-shifting of the subordinate clause “when Congress resumes session on Monday” makes it wrongly modify the prepositional phrase “to rehabilitate and utilize the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant,” thus muddling up the time frame for the actions described in the sentence. The correct sense emerges when that subordinate clause is front-shifted so it can relate to the whole main clause instead: “When Congress resumes session on Monday, around 190 solons are expected to support and petition for the immediate passage of a measure seeking to rehabilitate and utilize the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.”

It should be clear by now that when done indiscriminately, back-shifting subordinate clauses and phrases can be extremely hazardous to our writing. We thus need to be more judicious in constructing our sentences to ensure that our expositions are semantically and logically flawless at all times.

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 7 and 14, 2009, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Steeling ourselves against common subject-verb disagreement pitfalls

In last week’s edition of My Media English Watch, I reported this very serious grammar faux pas—a Facebook friend of mine called it an “epic fail”—in the front-page headline story of one of the leading Metro Manila broadsheets: “The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines on Wednesday reminded President Aquino III that providing contraceptives to poor couples who opt for artificial birth control face excommunication from the church.” (Italicization mine).

I already did a detailed grammar postmortem of that sentence in the Forum, including an analysis of the egregious subject-verb disagreement in its subordinate clause, but I think it would be worthwhile for Forum members to steel themselves once and for all against such subject-verb agreement pitfalls. I therefore decided to post in this week’s Forum an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in May last year, “Common subject-verb agreement pitfalls,” where I explained why both native and nonnative English speakers often commit such errors and how we can methodically avoid committing them.  

Here now for your continuing guidance is that essay (October 9, 2010).

Common subject-verb agreement pitfalls

A Baguio City-based reader, Dr. Antonio Bautista, raised the following interesting question about subject-verb agreement sometime ago.

Which one is correct, he asked, “The plural of nouns are formed in a number of different ways,” or “The plural of nouns is formed in a number of different ways”? And could you say, “The plurals of nouns are formed in a number of different ways”? The first is a direct quote from a book entitled Master English Grammar in 28 Days.

In my reply to Tony, I said that the first sentence is grammatically incorrect. The operative subject of the sentence is the singular noun “plural,” not the plural noun “nouns,” so the operative verb should be “is,” not “are.” The second sentence is the correct one. The third sentence is also grammatically correct because the plural-form verb “are” agrees in number with the plural noun “plurals.” (I must note belatedly, however, that the concept of “the plural of nouns” being notionally singular, it is more advisable to always treat it as grammatically singular—without the “s” in “plural.” Indeed, strictly speaking, the plurality of nouns as a concept is inherently singular.)    

The basic English grammar rule that applies here is, of course, that the verb should always agree in number with its subject: it should take the singular form when the subject is singular, and the plural form when the subject is plural. Quite often, though, this rule gets violated when the operative verb of a sentence is not close to its subject. Indeed, the farther they are from each other, the harder it is to figure out whether to use the singular or plural form of the verb.

This is what happened in that grammatically flawed sentence Tony sent in for analysis. The author was apparently distracted by the words “of nouns” separating the verb “are formed” from its true subject, the noun “plural,” which he must have thought was an adjective. In fact, it was being used as a noun for the form denoting “more than one.”

To avoid this very common grammatical error, we need to more closely inspect the form of the subject in a sentence before deciding whether it is singular or plural. As we all know, a multiword subject in a sentence typically takes any of three forms: noun phrase, gerund phrase, or infinitive phrase.

If the subject is a noun phrase, we need to figure out first which word in it is the operative noun; we shouldn’t be distracted by other nouns that may intrude in the phrase. For instance, in this sentence, “The lingering dispute between the second cousins [is, are] getting worse with each passing day,” the noun “second cousins” gets in the way between the verb and the noun “dispute.” It is clear, though, that the subject of the sentence, the noun phrase “the lingering dispute between the second cousins,” is singular, so the verb form should also be singular: “is getting.”

If the subject of a sentence is a gerund phrase, it is always singular no matter how long the modifying phrase that follows it might be. For instance, in this sentence, “Looking for my friend at the churchyard among the thousands of kneeling devotees [was, were] like looking for a needle in a haystack,” the singular “was” is the correct choice. This is because the gerund phrase “looking for my friend at the churchyard among the thousands of kneeling devotees,” despite its length and long modifier, is undoubtedly singular.

Infinitive phrases, like gerund phrases, are also always singular when used as the subject of a sentence, no matter how long the modifying phrase that follows them might be.

Consider this sentence: “To seek reelection in the face of harsh and widespread criticisms against her many official blunders [does, do] not appeal to the incumbent provincial governor.” The correct choice here is “does” because the infinitive phrase “to seek reelection in the face of harsh and widespread criticisms against her many official blunders,” despite its length and complicating noun phrases, is undoubtedly singular. (May 23, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 23, 2009, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A unified approach to the use of punctuation in English – Part III

As with all the alphabet-based languages, English is primarily dependent on word choices and their combinations for the successful delivery of ideas. In written form, however, English would be so clunky and insufferably confusing without the benefit of punctuation. Whether short or long, in fact, what makes sentences and expositions in English eminently readable and understandable is their proper use of punctuation marks—whether the comma, semicolon, colon, dash, parenthesis, or period—to clarify meaning and set off boundaries between structural units of the sentence.

But precisely when do we use each of these punctuation marks in our sentences and expositions? And in particular, which of the punctuation marks do we use to set off a parenthetical—by definition, any inserted amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence—from a main sentence?

In “The parenthesis and its uses,” a six-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008, I attempted to come up with a unified answer to all of these questions. I did so in the course of explaining the various grammatical and structural considerations involved in punctuating parentheticals. I posted the first part of those wide-ranging discussions in last week’s edition of the Forum; this time I am posting the second of the three-part series (October 2, 2010).

The parenthesis and its uses: parenthesis by dashes and parenthesis by parentheses

We already know that a parenthesis or parenthetical is basically added information whose distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically correct even without it. So far, however, we have taken up only its first two types—the nonrestrictive relative clause and the nonrestrictive appositive phrase, both of which require enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence. We have also taken up the restrictive relative clause and the restrictive appositive phrase, but we have seen that they aren’t really true parentheticals because they aren’t expendable—we don’t really have the option to drop them from the sentence.

This time we’ll take up the two other kinds of parentheticals: the parenthesis by dashes, and the parenthesis by parentheses. They differ from the parenthesis by comma in that neither of them can be punctuated properly and adequately by a pair of enclosing commas. In their case, though, the use of dashes or parentheses is generally interchangeable and is often a matter of stylistic choice. This choice largely depends on whether the parenthetical is really optional—perhaps simply an aside—or contextually necessary; in any case, however, using enclosing commas to set it off is out of the question.

Parenthesis by dashes. This kind of parenthetical normally folds another sentence into a sentence, as in this example: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” What sets off the parenthetical from the main sentence is a pair of double dashes, which indicates a much stronger break in the thought or structure of the sentence than what a pair of enclosing commas can provide.

See what happens when we use commas instead to punctuate that kind of parenthetical: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill, they said they didn’t know it then, but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” The pauses provided by the two commas are much too brief to indicate the sudden shift from the major developing thought to the subordinate idea.

If the writer so chooses, however, parentheses may also be used for that same parenthetical: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill (they said they didn’t know it then) but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” Note, though, that when parentheses are used, the implication is that the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he would when he uses double dashes instead.

Parenthesis by parentheses. This is the preferred punctuation when the writer wants to convey to the reader that the idea in the parenthetical isn’t really crucial to his exposition, as in this example: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.” However, if the writer intends to take up the dealer’s apparently false assurance in some detail later in the exposition, the parenthesis by dashes would be a good foreshadowing device: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan—the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled—busted one of its pistons.”

Parentheticals enclosed by parentheses need not be complete sentences, of course. They can be simple qualifying phrases within or at the tail end of sentences: “Many elective officials (of the dynastic kind, particularly) sometimes forget that they don’t own those positions.” “The disgruntled cashier took the day off (without even filing a leave).”

Even more commonly, parentheses are used to add a fact—maybe a name or a number—that’s subordinate or tangential to the rest of the sentence, as in this example: “Recent geologic research (Alvarez, Alvarez et al, 1980) indicates that the dinosaurs went extinct when an asteroid some 10 km in diameter smashed on present-day Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago.”

Now that I’m done discussing the parenthesis by parentheses, I would like to take this opportunity to make a clear distinction between parentheses and brackets in American English. As I’ve earlier discussed, parentheses—sometimes called “round brackets”—are meant to convey to the reader that (1) the idea in the parenthetical isn’t really crucial to the sentence, and that (2) the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he would when he sets them off with double dashes instead.

In contrast, brackets—also known as “square brackets”—are for more specialized uses, particularly for (1) inserting information or authorial comment into direct quotations, (2) inserting translations of quoted statements said in another language, (3) citing errors within quoted statements, and (4) setting off a parenthetical that’s already set off by parentheses in the sentence.

Precisely when is bracket Usage #1 called for? Assume that we are quoting verbatim a passage from Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quijote in reference to Dulcinea, his imagined Empress of La Mancha. Let’s say that the passage uses only pronouns to refer to Dulcinea, and we know that it isn’t permissible to alter exact quotes from a literary work. We then have to use brackets to insert information identifying Dulcinea for our readers: “‘If I were to show her [Dulcinea, his imagined Empress of La Mancha] to you,’ answered Don Quijote, ‘what merit would there be in acknowledging a truth so manifest to all? The important point is that you should believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend it without setting eyes on her.’”

As for bracket Usage #2, a publication in a particular language, say English, will need brackets to insert translations of quoted statements said in another language, say Tagalog, as in the following passage from a business magazine: “‘Hindi lang kulang, kapos na kapos talaga [It’s been not only short but way, way below our needs],’ she says of the family’s finances.’”

Bracket Usage #3 is called for when we have to cite errors in quoted statements, as in this example: “Our confused physics teacher said, ‘While eating an apple in a bathtub, Isaac Newton [by traditional accounts it was actually Archimedes] shouted “Eureka!” when he discovered the basic principle of hydrostatics.’”

Finally, we may need to take recourse to bracket Usage #4 to set off a parenthetical that’s already set off by parentheses, as in this example: “The life of Marcus Tullius Cicero (who wrote three major philosophical studies [On the Orator, On the Republic, and On the Laws] at a time that he still couldn’t engage in politics) coincided with the decline and fall of the Roman Republic.” Such usage isn’t a pretty sight, but there are times when scholarly exactitude demands it.

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This ends the three-part series on the parenthesis and its uses.

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 9 and February 16, 2008, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A unified approach to the proper use of punctuation in English – Part II

As with all the alphabet-based languages, English is primarily dependent on word choices and their combinations for the successful delivery of ideas. In written form, however, English would be so clunky and insufferably confusing without the benefit of punctuation. Whether short or long, in fact, what makes sentences and expositions in English eminently readable and understandable is their proper use of punctuation marks—whether the comma, semicolon, colon, dash, parenthesis, or period—to clarify meaning and set off boundaries between structural units of the sentence.

But precisely when do we use each of these punctuation marks in our sentences and expositions? And in particular, which of the punctuation marks do we use to set off a parenthetical—by definition, any inserted amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence—from a main sentence?

In “The parenthesis and its uses,” a six-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008, I attempted to come up with a unified answer to all of these questions. I did so in the course of explaining the various grammatical and structural considerations involved in punctuating parentheticals. I posted the first part of those wide-ranging discussions in last week’s edition of the Forum; this time I am posting the second of the three-part series (September 25, 2010).

The parenthesis and its uses: the appositive phrase

We will now discuss the appositive phrase found in the following sentence that I presented for evaluation towards the end of Part I: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” The appositive phrase here is, of course, the parenthetical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” It’s an added state­ment that gives context and texture to this vague, bare-bones sentence: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

On closer scrutiny, we will find that the appositive phrase is actually a simplified form of the nonrestrictive relative clause in this sentence: “Cleopatra, who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” It is, in fact, originally the relative clause “who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” but with both the relative pronoun “who” and the linking verb “was” taken out.

That grammatical streamlining process produces a modifier in noun form—“the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later”—that is in apposition or equivalent to the noun form it modifies—“Cleopatra.” Indeed, appositive phrases are a compact and concise way of describing people, places, and things or of qualifying ideas within the same sentence. They allow us to provide more details about a subject without having to start another sentence—a process that sometimes undesirably slows down the pace of an unfolding exposition or narrative.

The use of appositive phrases, we now will probably recall, is also one of the most efficient ways of combining sentences. It allows a related statement from another sentence to be folded into the sen­tence that precedes it. The sentence that we are evaluating now, for instance, has combined these two sentences: “Cleopatra greatly in­fluenced the affairs of the Roman Empire. She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” By making the state­ment in the second sentence an appo­sitive in the first, we get a sentence that’s richer in texture and more interest­ing to read: “Cleo­patra, the le­gendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly in­fluenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

Such constructions also have the added virtue of allowing us to develop the basic statement of a sentence unimpeded. Assume that we have already written this basic statement: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” If we use the appositive phrase “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” to form a new sentence after it, that new sentence would often become a stumbling block to developing the basic statement. Indeed, with a powerful statement like “She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” getting in the way, it won’t be an easy task to go back to the thread of our basic statement and develop it. In contrast, folding that powerful statement into an appositive phrase in the first sentence neatly sidesteps the potential continuity problem while making that first sentence much more readable and interesting.

The appositive phrase we have discussed above is of the non­restrictive type, which means that it isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence even if it adds important additional information to it. Nonrestrictive appositive phrases are parentheticals that, like non­restrictive relative clauses, need a pair of enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence.

But some appositive phrases are of the restrictive type and they don’t need those commas. An example of the restrictive appositive phrase is the phrase “Pliny the Elder” in this sentence: “The Roman scholar and encyclopedist Pliny the Elder distinguished himself as a cavalry commander in Germany and later served as a well-respected procurator in Gaul, Africa, and Spain.”

We must keep in mind, though, that restrictive appositive phrases rarely get much longer than the three-word example—“Pliny the Elder”—given above. This is because long, extended phrases generally don’t function well as restrictive appositives; without the enclosing commas that set off nonrestrictive appositive phrases from a sentence, extended phrases used as restrictive appositives tend to make sentences convoluted and difficult to grasp.

Try reading this sentence, for instance: “The 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines is about a wacky cross-channel air race that dangled £10,000 in prize money to bring flyers from all over the world.” The restrictive appositive phrase here is the seven-word movie title “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines,” which, if it weren’t italicized or placed within quotes in the sentence, would have made that sentence so difficult to grasp.    

Indeed, what we will encounter more often is the restrictive appositive, which identifies a person, place, or thing more closely by name in just, say, one to three words, like “Regina” and “Jennifer” in this sentence: “My brother-in-law’s sister Regina gave birth to a boy as their sister Jennifer was driving her to the hospital.”

Here, the appositives “Regina” and “Jennifer” aren’t set off by commas because both are restrictive—they can’t be omitted from the sentence without affecting its basic meaning. They serve to make it clear that the speaker’s brother-in-law has at least two sisters—the one who gave birth and the other who drove her to the hospital. Without those restrictive appositives, in fact, the sentence becomes incoherent: “My brother-in-law’s sister gave birth to a boy as their sister was driving her to the hospital.”

But this question will obviously linger in our minds: What if we supply the enclosing commas and make those two appositives nonrestrictive instead, as in this construction: “My brother-in-law’s sister, Regina, gave birth to a boy as their sister, Jennifer, was driving her to the hospital”? The answer, as I will now explain, is a categorical “no.”

In its nonrestrictive form (with the enclosing commas), the appositive “Regina” implies that the speaker’s brother-in-law has only one sister whose name happens to be Regina. However, the other nonrestrictive appositive, “Jennifer,” also implies that both the speaker’s brother-in-law and his sister Regina have only one sister whose name happens to be Jennifer.

This, of course, contradicts the earlier implication that the speaker’s brother-in-law has only one sister, Regina. Indeed, he has at least two sisters, Regina and Jennifer. This is why it isn’t advisable to put what should logically be a restrictive appositive into a nonrestrictive form, for these two forms are neither grammatically and semantically equivalent nor interchangeable.

Even if there’s no possibility of an identity mix-up, the restrictive appositive form is often preferable to the nonrestrictive form if the appositive and the word it identifies are so closely related, as in this example: “Her husband Alfredo is trying his luck as an overseas foreign worker.” Here, it can be argued that commas should set off “Alfredo” because this name isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence, thus making it a nonrestrictive appositive. However, the nouns “her husband” and “Alfredo” are so closely related that they can logically be considered a single noun phrase, “her husband Alfredo.” The commas then become superfluous, making “Alfredo” a restrictive appositive.   

We will take up the parenthesis by dashes and the parenthesis by parentheses next week in the third and last part of this series.

Next Week: The parenthesis by dashes and the parenthesis by parentheses

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 25 and February 2, 2008, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A unified approach to the proper use of punctuation in English

As with all the alphabet-based languages, English is primarily dependent on word choices and their combinations for the successful delivery of ideas. In written form, however, English would be so clunky and insufferably confusing without the benefit of punctuation. Whether short or long, in fact, what makes sentences and expositions in English eminently readable and understandable is their proper use of punctuation marks—whether the comma, semicolon, colon, semicolon, dash, parenthesis, or period—to clarify meaning and set off boundaries between structural units of the sentence.

Punctuation marks, of course, usually serve the basic purpose of providing desired pauses and stops within a sentence, as in this sentence from Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.” Here, we have the commas providing short pauses, the semicolons, longer pauses; and the period, a full stop. Then here’s a sentence that uses a colon to formally and emphatically introduce something: “This is what he always watched for in his business: the bottom line.” And finally, from a short-story by a friend of mine, Palanca Awards Hall of Famer Ed Maranan, here’s a sentence that uses a pair of dashes to set off a parenthetical remark from the main sentence: “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift—and yes, pride in his grandpa—was growing by the minute.” (Click this link to read my discussions with Ed about the punctuation of this sentence.)

This brings us to the big question regarding these punctuation marks: Precisely when do we use each of them in our sentences and expositions? And in particular, which of the punctuation marks do we use to set off a parenthetical—by definition, any inserted amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence—from a main sentence?

In “The parenthesis and its uses,” a six-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008, I attempted to come up with a unified answer to all of these questions. I did so in the course of explaining the various grammatical and structural considerations involved in punctuating parentheticals. I would like to share the wide-ranging discussions in those six essays with Forum members, so I have reconstituted them into three parts for consecutive posting in the Forum.

Here now is the first of those three parts (September 18, 2010):

The parenthesis and its uses - I

We are all familiar with the two curved marks that we know as the parenthesis ( ), but what some of us may not know is that in English grammar, the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence that’s set off from a sentence or passage by some form of punctuation. That punctuation can be those two curved marks, of course, but depending on the importance of the inserted information and the writer’s intention, it can also be a pair of enclosing commas or a pair of enclosing dashes.

Let’s take a look at the following forms of the parenthesis along with examples of each:

(1) Parenthesis by comma: (a) “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” (b) “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

(2) Parenthesis by dashes: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.”

(3) Parenthesis by parentheses: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.”

In each of the three examples above, the information set off by the punctuation marks—whether by commas, dashes, or parentheses—is called a parenthetical, and its distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically correct even without it. A parenthetical is basically added information; however, it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable. It may be needed to put the statement in a desired context, to establish the logic of the sentence, or to convey a particular tone or mood for the statement. In fact, the punctuation chosen for a parenthetical largely determines its optionality or importance to the statement.

So the big question about parentheticals is really this: Under what circumstances do we use commas, dashes, or parentheses to punctuate or set off a parenthetical from a sentence?

In Example 1(a) above, the parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” is what’s known as a nonrestrictive relative clause. A nonrestrictive relative clause is a parenthetical that provides information that’s not absolutely needed to understand the sentence; in other words, it is nondefining information. The sentence will thus remain grammatically and semantically intact without it: “Ferdinand Magellan was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Without the nonrestrictive relative clause, however, the sentence loses a lot of valuable information about its subject, “Ferdinand Magellan”; in fact, the intended context for the statement disappears completely.

For such type of parenthetical, the most appropriate choice of punctuation is a pair of enclosing commas, as was used in the original sentence. It won’t do to punctuate a nonrestrictive relative clause with dashes or parentheses, for either of them would render the information optional, as we can see in these two versions of that sentence:

“Ferdinand Magellan—who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521—was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

“Ferdinand Magellan (who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521) was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

Both of these sentence constructions run counter to the writer’s original intention.

We must keep in mind, though, that the same parenthetical—“who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521”—would have become a restrictive relative clause had the subject been a generic noun like, say, “the explorer,” in which case the pair of enclosing commas would have been rendered unnecessary: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The absence of the enclosing commas indicates that the nonrestrictive relative clause has become a restrictive one.

Obviously, the following questions will come to mind when that happens: Why not leave those enclosing commas alone? What difference does it make if we let those commas stay even after changing “Ferdinand Magellan” to “the explorer”?

The reason lies in the basic grammatical difference between a proper noun and a generic noun. We will recall that a proper noun is one that designates a particular being or thing, and that as a rule in English, a proper noun is capitalized to indicate this fact. A proper noun, moreover, has this important characteristic: it generally won’t accept a limiting or restrictive relative modifier to define it. By its very name, a proper noun is supposed to have already defined itself, making it one of a kind.

Now, we need to recall at this point that a relative clause or a “who”-parenthetical that comes after a proper noun—“Ferdinand Magellan” in this case—becomes a restrictive clause or limiting modifier when it’s not enclosed by a pair of commas. It is therefore grammatically incorrect for the subject “Ferdinand Magellan” to be followed by a relative clause that’s not enclosed by commas, as in this erroneous construction: “Ferdinand Magellan who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Indeed, the parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” will always need the pair of enclosing commas in such cases.

It’s an altogether different thing when we replace a proper noun with a generic noun in such sentence constructions. We will then have two grammatical choices. If our intention is to, say, make “the explorer” specifically refer to “Ferdinand Magellan” and to no other person, then we need to modify it with a restrictive relative clause—one without the enclosing commas, as was done previously: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

On the other hand, if by “the explorer” we mean any explorer at all who had claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown, we would need to modify that generic noun with a nonrestrictive clause or nonlimiting modifier instead: “The explorer, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was not the same Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The enclosing commas—along with the mandatory conversion of the predicate of the sentence into a negative form—indicate that the person referred to isn’t unique but one of a number who made the claim; he could not have been the same Ferdinand Magellan referred to in the sentence with the restrictive relative clause.

Now let’s evaluate the second sentence that I gave earlier as an example of parenthesis by comma: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” Here, the parenthe­tical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” is what is known as the appositive phrase. It is a statement that serves to explain or identify the noun or pronoun that comes before or after it.

The appositive phrase is an extremely useful grammatical device for giving context and texture to what otherwise might be very bland or uninformative sentences. We will continue this discussion in next week’s edition of the Forum.

Next Week: The nonrestrictive appositive phrase

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 12 and 18, 2008, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A potent tool for whittling down complex sentences into simple ones

Along with clarity, conciseness is a hallmark of good writing. The astute writer knows that in written exposition, what ultimately matters isn’t the flurry of words he or she is capable of generating but the elimination of every word that’s not absolutely necessary to the successfully delivery of the idea. One of the potent grammatical tools for this whittling down process is the so-called reduction of adjective clauses, which involves the conversion of adjective clauses in complex sentences into structurally simpler, more concise adjective phrases. When done just right, this process neatly does away with the subordinating conjunction and the passive verb form that links the subordinate clause to the main clause, and voila! what emerges is a compact, smoother single-clause sentence that’s much easier to read both silently and aloud.

In an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2004, “Reducing adjective clauses for conciseness,” I discussed this sentence-simplification tool in some detail. I am now posting that essay in this week’s edition of the Forum in the hope that you’ll find its prescriptions helpful in making your own sentences and expositions more concise and more readable. (September 10, 2010)

Reducing adjective clauses for conciseness

The mark of fluent English-language writers or speakers is the way they effortlessly do away with words that, although mandated by formal grammar, only slow down the delivery of their ideas. Nonnative users of English, on the other hand, often stick to the grammar protocols tenaciously, leaving no grammatical gaps in their sentences that might betray their less than perfect proficiency in the language. As might be expected, of course, this desire to treat syntax and semantics with mathematical precision achieves the exact opposite. It results in stiff, unidiomatic English that clearly identifies the users as nonnative ones trying mighty hard not to be perceived as such.

One aspect of English where exactitude in syntax clearly doesn’t pay is in the use of adjective clauses. Recall that adjective clauses are those extended modifiers that give more details about nouns to put them in better perspective. Adjective clauses, we will also remember, are normally introduced by the relative pronouns “that,” “which,” “who,” “whom,” “whose,” and “where,” which link the additional ideas to the main (and independent) clause.

Let’s see how this relative linking mechanism works by examining the following sentences: “The plane that is flying over the village right now is a Boeing 747.” “An old bidding strategy, which is rarely used these days, won them the lucrative contract.” “The woman who was looking for me this morning is my fiancée.” “The street where she passes every night is always well-lighted.” “The caretaker to whom she entrusted her house proved untrustworthy.” “That candidate whose English is so atrociously bad might just win the election.”

Most nonnative speakers of English, not yet wise to the highly idiomatic character of the language, will often write or articulate those adjective-clause-bearing sentences above in exactly the way they are shown. Native speakers, however, routinely shortcut the construction of such sentences; they get rid of words not essential to conveying their meaning. Their usual targets are the subordinating conjunction and the passive verb form that links the subordinate clause to the main clause. This technique, when done successfully without materially changing the meaning of the sentence, is called the reduction of adjective clauses. The simple, forthright process converts the adjective clauses into structurally simpler, more concise adjective phrases.

See what happens to the six sentences when this reduction technique is done just right (bracketed are the words that have been knocked off without changing the meaning of the sentence): “The plane [that is] flying over the village right now is a Boeing 757.” “An old bidding strategy [which is] rarely used these days won them the lucrative contract.” “The woman [who was] looking for me this morning is my fiancée.” “The street [where] she passes every night is always well-lighted.” “The caretaker [to whom] he entrusted her house with proved untrustworthy.” “That candidate [whose English is] with the atrociously bad English might just win the election.”

The adjective reduction process is simplicity itself when the relative pronoun is followed by “be” in any of its forms. In the case of the first four adjective-clause-bearing sentences above, all of which use “be,” we simply drop the linking phrases “that is,” “which was,” “who was,” and “where” and do absolutely nothing else. The meanings remain the same. But with sentences that use verbs other than “be,” the reduction often calls for a minor revision of the adjective clause to keep their meanings intact. See, for instance, how confusing the fifth sentence becomes when it simply drops “to whom” and leaves it at that: “The caretaker she entrusted her house during her absence proved untrustworthy.” Converting the relative clause into a prepositional noun phrase using “with” restores the meaning: “The caretaker she entrusted her house with during her absence proved untrustworthy.”

Reduction is also possible when what follows the relative pronoun is an active verb. The relative pronoun can then be dropped and the verb changed to its –ing form. In this way, a sentence like “Her allergy is a rabid type that arises from childhood trauma” reduces to “Her allergy is a rabid type arising from childhood trauma.” The adjective clause morphs into an adverb phrase. 

Not all sentences with adjective clauses can be reduced meaningfully, however. In particular, reduction fails when a sentence contains the modal auxiliary verbs “should,” “may,” “can,” or “must.” The element of conditionality provided by these words gets lost in the reduction, distorting the meaning of the sentence. Consider this example: “This uniform, which should be worn at all times during regular working days, will be provided free to all personnel.” Its mandatory tone vanishes in this wrongful reduction: “This uniform, worn at all times during regular working days, will be provided free to all personnel.”

Adjective clause reduction definitely makes sentences compact and smoother, but we should be careful in doing it to avoid mangling our intended ideas. (February 18, 2004)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 18, 2004, © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. This piece subsequently appeared as Chapter 100 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge, © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

When it greatly matters what English accent we’ve acquired

Does it really matter what English accent we’ve acquired? For our day-to-day spoken communication with our own countrymen, not really that much. It’s anything goes for everybody, from primary-school teachers all the way to the movers and shakers in the corporate world, in the halls of Congress, and in the higher echelons of government. We all can get by with our own variety of Taglish, Ilocano English, Bicol English, or Visayan English in the same way that many Chinese get by with their Chinglish, the Japanese with their Japlish, the Singaporeans with their Singlish, and the South Koreans with their Konglish.

In the more demanding outsourced call-center services industry, however, great premium is placed on what’s called “USA 101” for the North American market and “Aussie 101” for the Australian market. Both require a clear, neutral English accent, which means none of—or the ruthless elimination of—the distracting peculiarities of the nonnative spoken Englishes I enumerated earlier.

Indeed, the accent-neutralization of one’s English is the hefty price of acceptance to a call-center job, and in the following essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008, I describe what it takes to acquire a globally understandable, acceptable, and bankable spoken English. (September 4, 2010) 

 

On English accents and globalization

I recently mentioned in my column in The Manila Times that prospective Filipino call-center agents are trained to acquire a neutral American English accent to communicate more effectively with the North Americans they have to deal with over the phone. In response, a US-based reader, Celso Madarang, wrote me that he couldn’t imagine how a school or a seminar can teach people a particular English accent.

He might find it surprising, I told Celso, that there are now a good number of language institutes in the Philippines that specialize in teaching people how to acquire a desired English accent. In addition, most of the call centers themselves have in-house accent training departments that drill prospective call-center agents on the English accent the call center specifically needs.

In fact, my eldest son Eduardo underwent one such English accent training the other year when, on a lark, he tried applying for a call-center job. He got accepted and worked as a call-center agent for two months. He eventually quit because as a working student, he couldn’t take the “graveyard shift” from 10:00 p.m.-7:00 a.m. anymore, but the accent training certainly gave him a very pleasant American English accent. It served him very well in his job as part-time instructor in computer basics and web programming in a leading Metro Manila computer school (and, if I may add as a postscript, in his current job as a call-center technical support representative).

I also told Celso that lately, I had also been pleasantly surprised to learn that American English accent training is being taught in an even more massive way in India, particularly in Bangalore. India, having been colonized by the British for almost 200 years, has a strong English-language heritage like the Philippines, but most people in India happen to have such a pronounced natural singsong accent when speaking in English. That accent therefore needs to be neutralized for globalization’s sake, and I told Celso that I had come across a detailed account of how this is being done. This was in an early chapter of Thomas Friedman’s bestselling book on globalization, The World is Flat, that I am currently reading.

Friedman recounts that English-language trainers drill the Indians with stupendously complicated English-language phonetic drills. Among them is this mean tongue-twister: “Thirty little turtles in a bottle of bottled water. A bottle of bottled water held thirty little turtles. It didn’t matter that each turtle has to rattle a metal ladle in order to get a little bit of noodles.” Indeed, when I tried enunciating this particular phonetic drill, my tongue got so hopelessly tangled inside my mouth. I suppose, though, that the drills are doing wonders to the Indians, for I understand there are now tens of thousands of them serving as call-center agents for North American target markets.

These thoughts that I shared with Celso drew the following rejoinder from him:

“About my interest in how someone develops accents, I want to tell you about an experience I had when I was in Sydney, Australia, in 1966 when the ship I was with was on rest and recreation after a three-month tour in the Tongkin Gulf war zone in Vietnam. For the two weeks that the ship was in port, it was designated as a visiting ship. This meant that civilians could come on board to mingle with the crew and see how the sailors lived; our living quarters, of course, were understandably off-limits.

“Anyway, a group of Filipinos came on board one day. We got into conversations that alternated between Tagalog and English. In one of those conversations, a female Australian among the ship’s crew told me that I had ‘such a beautiful accent.’ Now, that remark really surprised me because I knew I didn’t have an accent; indeed, it was she and the others who had an accent—an Australian one—that they seemed not to be even aware they had. Isn’t that funny?”(August 09, 2008)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, August 9, 2008, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.