Download Rearranging word order for comprehension

Adapted from: Cooney, Seamus. English 440: Studies in Verse. Course home page. 27 Jan. 1998. Dept.
of English, Western Michigan U. 15 Jan. 2008.
<http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/tchg/lit/adv/word.order.html>.
Rearranging word order for comprehension
Not all sophisticated writing, especially writing in verse, follows the most common word order or phrase
order of spoken English.
In spoken English we say "Mary hit the ball" or "We saw the movie" or "The novel was about the French
Revolution," etc. that is, SUBJECT --> PREDICATE, and in the simplest predicates that means
SUBJECT --> VERB --> OBJECT (abbreviated as SVO).
THE PARTS OF A SENTENCE
Subject
Predicate
Noun phrase (noun + modifiers)
Verb
Object
The boy
hit
the ball.
The cat
sat on the mat.
We
enjoyed the movie, despite the sex scenes.
We can handle many variations on this order without any trouble in the spoken language. But in the
written language, sophisticated writers use more elaborate structures, expecting readers to be able to
handle them. Many older writers come from an age when Latin was studied in every school, and
consequently young readers were trained to notice what was the subject and what the object of verbs, how
verbs agreed in person and number with their subjects, and how case was not (in Latin) altered by
position. ("The boy bit the dog" and "The dog bit the boy" are not synonymous in English, but in Latin
"Puer mordet canem" and "Canem mordet puer" mean exactly the same thing.)
Now for some more complicated examples. Shakespeare writes (sonnet 73):
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When ....
And Thomas Gray writes:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.
When we understand these sentences we mentally rearrange them like this.
Subject
Predicate
Noun phrase (noun + modifiers)
Verb
Object
thou
mayst in me
behold
That time of year.
The dark unfathomed caves of
ocean
bear
Full many a gem of purest ray
serene.
So when it comes to longer and more complex sentences, readers must carry out the same kind of mental
rearranging. If you're listening to the way a poem sounds as you read, your voice will often help you
grasp the syntactic structure. Pay attention to punctuation and never think a sentence has ended just
because there's a line break.
Th'applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes
Their lot forbade ...
If you are reading this out carefully, you will notice that line after line gives you in parallel structure a
series of four noun phrases, and as you go you'll know to expect a verb still to come. (As you read, you
can't know whether the noun phrases will turn out to be used as the subject of the coming verb or as its
objects.) Thus you will sustain the pitch of your voice as each line ends, while reading slowly enough and
with enough of a pauses at each line ending to let the rhyme be heard, and as you come to the end of the
stanza you'll know the sentence still awaits its clinching verb. Are the noun phrases the subject or the
object of that verb?
Subject
Noun phrase (noun + modifiers)
Their lot
Predicate
Verb
Object
Th'applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
forbade
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes
(That last example is from G. M. Hopkins's "Spring and Fall.")