A Grammar for Reading and Writing
(adapted from />We do not read words, one by one. Meaning is contained not so much in
individual words as in collections of words conveying broader or more specific
ideas.
Readers thus make sense of a sentence by breaking it into meaningful chunks
and examining their interrelationships. Skillful writers focus not so much on
individual words, as on creating and rephrasing larger phrases and clauses.
The topics covered here describe the "meaningful chunks" of English sentence
structure. In so doing they examine key grammatical principles underlying
effective reading and writing.
Speaking Constructions, Not Words
When discussing speech, we say we know something when we can repeat it "word
for word." Yet, when we speak, we do not really speak "one word at a time." We
break the flow of words into chunks. And we do not do this randomly, simply to
take a breath now and then. We insert pauses to break the flow into meaningful
chunks. We do not say
I left my raincoat on the chair.
We say:
I left my raincoat on the chair.
When we break a sentence into portions, whether by pauses or intonation, we are
actually doing grammatical analysis. We break the sentence into chunks to
facilitate understanding.
Reading and Writing Constructions, Not Words
Words appear on a page one word after another. Yet readers do not read word by
word, one word at a time. As with speech, we find meaning by grouping words
into larger units.
You might think that you read the previous sentence word by word:
As with speech, we find meaning by grouping words into
larger units.
Yet meaning becomes apparent only when you see the line somewhat as:
As with speech, we find meaning

female.
The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday
In the second instance, the driver hit a female in a head on collision.
The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday
In the third, and more improbable, alternative a drunk driver somehow hit a
female's head.
The drunk driver hit her head on Wednesday
Maybe she was leaning over into traffic! Should we come upon such a sentence
within a text, we would look to the context to decide which reading is appropriate.
Structure and Meaning
Finally, consider the following three sentences:
1. The boy ate the apple in the pie.
2. The boy ate the apple in the summer.
3. The boy ate the apple in a hurry.
At first glance, the three sentences seem to have the same structure.
1. The boy ate the apple in the pie.
2. The boy ate the apple in the summer.
3. The boy ate the apple in a hurry.
As we try to find meaning in the sentences, however, we discover that their
structure is different:
1. The boy ate the apple in the pie.
2. The boy ate the apple in the summer.
3. The boy ate the apple in a hurry.
how we break a sentence up.
Punctuation often helps in this effort, but punctuation marks only certain
boundaries. There is the story of the English teacher who wrote the following
words on the board and asked the students to punctuate the sentence:
Woman without her man is nothing.
Students came away with different meanings, depending on how they grouped
the words. (Reach an understanding of the sentence yourself, then see the

to `Lassie.’ Then again, many different dogs played Lassie!
Suppose you want to indicate a female person across the room. If you don’t know
her name, what do you say?
That girl.
If there were more than one, this alone would be too general. It lacks specificity.
The girl in the blue Hawaiian shirt
x The taller of the two cheerleaders by the water cooler
When a single term will not supply the reference we need, we add terms to focus
or limit a more general term. Instead of referring to drugs in a discussion, we
might refer to hallucinogenic drugs. We might distinguish between hard drugs and
prescription drugs . In so doing we modify the notion of a drug to describe the
specific one, or ones, we have in mind. (Then again, at times we are forced to
use many words when we cannot recall the one that will really do, as when we
refer to that funny device doctors pump up on your arm to measure blood
pressure instead of a sphygmomanometer ).
This section examines how we construct full and specific references using noun
phrases. An ability to recognize complete noun phrases is essential to reading
ideas rather than words. A knowledge of the various possibilities for constructing
extended noun pharses is essential for crafting precide and specific references.
Nouns
To begin our discussion, we must first establish the notion of a noun.
English teachers commonly identify nouns by their content. They describe
nouns as words that "identify people, places, or things," as well as feelings or
ideas—words like salesman , farm , balcony , bicycle , and trust. If you can
usually put the word a or the before a word, it’s a noun. If you can make the
word plural or singular, it's a noun. But don't worry...all that is needed at the
moment is a sense of what a noun might be.
Noun Pre-Modifiers
What if a single noun isn't specific enough for our purposes? How then do we
modify a noun to construct a more specific reference?

*
Premodifiers limit the reference in a wide variety of ways.
Order: second, last
Location: kitchen, westerly
Source or Origin: Canadian
Color: red, dark
Smell: acrid, scented
Material: metal, oak
Size: large, 5-inch
Weight: heavy
Luster: shiny, dull
A number of pre-modifiers must appear first if they appear at all.
Specification: a, the, every
Designation: this, that, those, these
Ownership/Possessive: my, our, your, its, their, Mary’s
Number: one, many
These words typically signal the beginning of a noun phrase.
Some noun phrases are short:
the table
→ *
Some are long:
the second shiny red Swedish touring sedan
*
a large smelly red Irish setter
*
my carved green Venetian glass salad bowl
*
the three old Democratic legislators
*
Notice that each construction would function as a single unit within a sentence.

*
Post-modifiers can be short
a dream
*
or long, as in Martin Luther King Jr.’s reference to
a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former
slaves
*
and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together
at a table of brotherhood.
What does King have? A dream? No. He has a specific dream. Once we are
sensitive to the existence of noun phrases, we recognize a relatively simple
structure to the sentence. Here we recognize a noun phrase with a very long
post-modifier—thirty-two words to be exact.
We do not get lost in the flow of words, but recognize structure. At the point that
we recognize structure within the sentence, we recognize meaning. (Notice also
that post-modifiers often include clauses which themselves include complete
sentences, as in the last example above.)
Post-modifiers commonly answer the traditional news reporting questions of who
, what , where , when , how , or why . Noun post-modifiers commonly take
the following forms:
prepositional phrase the dog in the store
*
_ing phrase the girl running to the store
*
_ed past tense the man wanted by the police
*
wh - clauses the house where I was born
*
that/which clauses the thought that I had yesterday

the book on the table
Book is a noun at the center of the noun phrase. But table is also a noun. If
we analyze the noun phrase completely, on all levels, we find:
the book on the table
*
on the table
→ *
We can have prepositional phrase within prepositional phrase within prepositional
phrases:
…the book on the table in the kitchen…
*
on the table in the kitchen…
*
in the kitchen …
*
We don't want to recognize every little noun phrase. We want to recognize the
larger ones that shape the meaning. The book is not "on the table." The
book is "on the table in the kitchen."
The Senate of the United States is composed of two legislators from each State.
Question: Who is in the Senate?
a) two legislators
b) two legislators from each State?
The answer is b). The full Senate consists of two from each state (100 people),
not simply two! We read the sentence as
The Senate of the United States is composed of
two legislators from each State.
*
If we read the sentence as
The Senate of the United States
is composed of two legislators

The original quotation does not refer to the `best and sharpest film’ of Coppola’s
career, but to his `best and sharpest film in years.’
Noun Phrases: The Dominant Construction
Finally, the degree to which noun phrases are the dominant construction within
texts can be seen in the opening paragraph of the Text for Discussion: Annotation
- Needle Exchange Programs and the Law - Time for a Change. The complete
noun phrases appear within square brackets and appear in red.
(1) In [ his social history of venereal disease ], [ No Magic Bullet ], [ Allan M.
Brandt ]describes[ the controversy in the US military about preventing venereal
disease among soldiers during World War I ]. Should there be [ a disease
prevention effort that recognized that many young American men would succumb
to the charms of French prostitutes ], or should there be [ a more punitive
approach to discourage sexual contact ]? Unlike[ the New Zealand
Expeditionary forces ], which gave[ condoms ]to[ their soldiers ],[ the United
States ]decided to give [ American soldiers ][after-the-fact, and largely
ineffective, chemical prophylaxis ]. [ American soldiers ]also were subject to
[ court martial ] if they contracted[ a venereal disease ]. [ These measures ]
failed. [ More than 383,000 soldiers ]were diagnosed with[ venereal diseases ]
between April 1917 and December 1919 and lost [ seven million days of active
duty ]. [ Only influenza ], which struck in [ an epidemic ], was [ a more
common illness among servicemen ].
Implications For Reading and Writing
The above discussion introduces a number of concepts crucial to effective reading
and writing.
• We do not read texts word by word, but chunk by chunk. We must read
each grammatical construction as a single unit. Deciphering sentences
involves isolating phrases within a sentence and recognizing where long
phrases begin and end.
• To write well is not to string words together, but to string together larger
phrases, to create full references that carefully distinguish one idea from

The Constitution is the nation’s charter, and lawmakers should resist the
temptation to push for amendments every time an election year rolls
around.
Notice how much richer the next sentence is (additional modifiers in bold face) .
The Constitution of the United States is the nation’s bedrock charter,
and devoted lawmakers sworn to uphold it should resist the dangerous
temptation to push for pandering amendments every time an election
year rolls around.
(1) Janet Maslin, `When Phrases That Flatter Are Misused,’ The New YorkTimes ,
Arts & Leisure section, August 23, 1998, p. 9.
Sentence and Predicate Modifiers
At times when reading, we come away with little, if any, understanding. We see
the trees, but not the forest.
We may miss the meaning for a number of reasons. We may not know the
meaning of certain words or the concepts to which they refer. Even when we
understand the words, we may come away with little understanding because the
writing itself is particularly complex. In this latter instance, it is often helpful to
apply grammatical analysis, to consciously attempt to break the sentence into
meaningful units.
A Model Of English Sentence Structure
All English sentences follow the same basic formula. All speakers of the language
are familiar with that formula, and yet this model is rarely if ever taught. (1) The
discussion here lays that formula out.
The discussion of noun phrases demonstrated the need to recognize grammatical
constructions as complete units. There we were concerned with a single
grammatical construction irrespective of where it appeared within a sentence.
This section looks more broadly at the sentence as a whole. It identifies various
positions or slots within the sentence and discusses how constructions appearing
within these slots shape the meaning of the sentence as a whole. In so doing, the
discussion shows you how to make sense of complex sentences when you come

He did not marry her because he loved her.
The two meanings stem from two equally legitimate analyses. In the analysis
He did not marry her [ because he loved her
they are not married. The phrase
because he loved her