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A request to the Experts....



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Fri Aug 22, 2014 2:44 am
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dhyan says...



I have a small request to the experts. I don't know if this has been done before on the site but its just a humble request and i feel that many will benefit from it; especially myself.

I've seen that in some of the grammar books, for e.g. in the Wren & Martin Grammar book there is a section which is dedicated to Sentence analysis and Structure. It has all possible sentence structure. Maybe not all but most common ones' at the least. They will identify all possible grammatical terms related to a sentence.

There will be a sentence, from which they will identify the following

1. Type of sentence - Assertive, interrogative, exclamatory etc.
2. Simple sentence, compound, complex?
3. Noun phrases - Adjective - Descriptive, Distributive....etc.
4. Verb phrases - Adverbs - Adverb of time, place....etc.

Basically they will go into detail. No explanation. But just merely identifying assuming that the learner already knows the meaning of the terms. After learning Grammar many people find it difficult to put into practice. I feel that after learning the terms of grammar, if a person were to read a couple of hundred sentences with this sort of analysis, grammar will become more fun, practical and clear.

So, a humble request to the experts. If you can identify all possible grammatical terms of about 50 sentences from maybe a Classical novel like "The Great Gatsby" or any other book with a variety of sentence structures many people will benefit from it.
Even if it be 5 sentences a day, It will be great.

I'm so excited. Hopefully i'll be heard. :)

Thanks in Advance.
Writing to change myself.

That will change the world.
  





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Fri Aug 22, 2014 6:33 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Why?

Honestly— why?

You don't need to know all those terms to have good grammar. I can't remember the vast majority of terms for what makes up grammar, and I've studied it extensively. Most people do not know all those terms. They don't know the exact type of sentence they're writing. I only know those things because I am studying linguistics (and even then, I rely on lists of what words are in what categories for my analysis because of how much I forget).

What you're asking is so individual for every person's linguistic style that it will not help you figure out your own grammar. Not to mention not every sentence you analyze will have all those parts. Every single person, every single genre, and basically every single story has a different type of syntax. This is why reading is better than analysis: you absorb and mix and match, eventually finding your own voice.

Linguistic analysis of sentences— which is what you're asking somebody to do— doesn't actually have anything to do with grammar. At all. Grammar isn't used in linguistics because most people do not speak with proper grammar. The "proper" way of doing things doesn't get used in regular speech and writing. Because when a language is alive, people string words together however they want.

Grammar is impractical. Grammar is arbitrary. Grammar changes constantly. Grammar is nothing more than a bunch of academics sitting in an ivory tower saying "here is how language should be used"... and nobody uses it that way.

Also, do you have any idea how long linguistic analysis takes? Any idea at all? I've done one part of what you're asking in my linguistics classes, and a ten word sentence can take twenty minutes to analyze just for the syntax tree. This is the bare minimum analyzing the words, slotting them into chunks of noun phrases, verb phrases, and prepositional phrases. You also have to work out any ambiguity, how they relate to each other, and deal with phrases that don't contain every aspect (some phrases, for example, lack a noun phrase).

Then you're asking a linguist to add in pragmatics, which takes far longer to figure out. Pragmatics is the single hardest thing to do, linguistically, because it's the single messiest part of language. It means you have to figure out the speaker's or writer's intent, figure out why they're saying something the way they are, what the context is, and various other parts of pragmatics that are in general headache worthy.

Plus, if linguists do all the work for you in analyzing sentences, then how will you learn about linguistics? How will you see what sentences look like under the scientific microscope? How will you learn grammar if you analyze something that has pretty literally nothing to do with grammar?

Not to mention your criteria is highly limited and doesn't allow for sentences that have different structures. Fragments exist a fair chunk. Noun phrases and verb phrases vary in size extensively. Sentences can also be analyzed in multiple ways; my favourite ambiguity phrase is "my dog ate the muffins in the closet"— does that mean the muffins were in the closet when the dog ate them (meaning "muffins in the closet" is tied together as a noun phrase, with "ate" as a verb phrase), or the dog went in the closet to eat muffins (meaning "ate the muffins" is a verb phrase, and "in the closet" is a prepositional phrase)?

It would be far more useful if you did this yourself. Somebody doing this for you means you don't go through the thought processes they did. The important part to actually understanding grammar and language is the thought process. You have to know why you're doing what you're doing.

Put in the work. Learn the rules. Find out the why behind the grammar you see. Once you know the why, you can break the rules. Find out what rules are bent in what genres. How prescriptive grammar is broken in fiction. What each grammar rule means for the tone you're trying to give the scene.

Simply analyzing sentences from classics won't give you that.

It never will.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sat Aug 23, 2014 8:05 am
dhyan says...



Wow, i think i realise that all i've written has come out of utter ignorance. Im so sorry you feel this way. I know your not offended but i guess this would be the reaction of everyone who reads my request, which i regret writing now.

I thought it was essential to learn this to write better, especially after hearing that it is from my seniors. I didnt know how difficult it is up till now. And another thing i have been puzzled since i started writing. Always asking question about what to do and how, and that can be seen from all my previous posts. I am really puzzled and need help big time.

Thanks for opening my eyes. Ok, to what extent should grammar be learnt? Help :$
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Sat Aug 23, 2014 9:13 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Learning linguistics most certainly helps your writing, but it's not necessary at all. For me the main thing I got out of it was making my sentences less dense and clearer in general. Linguistics is how language is actually used, hence its total disconnect from grammar. Pragmatics can really help you build awesome dialogue, but there are hundreds of writers who can do dialogue without knowing pragmatics in the linguistic sense. Syntax study can help clear ambiguity in your sentences, but you can also learned that through trial and error no problem.

When it comes to how much grammar you should learn? As much as you need to use it well.

Allow me to explain that ridiculously vague sentence.

Firstly, English has a number of varieties. Varieties of English are classified as languages in their own rights because they have internal consistency and rules that just emerge naturally. Varieties include Cockney (variety of British English), Newfoundland English (variety of Canadian English), African American Vernacular English (a variety often found in American black communities), and Southern English (Southern US). All of these languages are considered valid, and one is not more right than the other. Somebody who knows mainstream American English and African American Vernacular English could qualify themselves as bilingual, because they are completely different languages with different structures.

Whatever variety you speak, you end up having a sort of internal compass for what's "correct" and "incorrect" in that language. If you have English as a second language, then this compass is lessened, but you can build it up via consuming materials in your desired dialect (including reading, speaking, and listening). So, you end up with a large amount of internal knowledge that is pretty automatic. You will never get this level of knowledge for all the varieties of English out there.

Don't get me started on dialects, which aren't separate languages but affect pronunciation, word order, and syntax. You can also have creole languages and pidgins, which are hybrids of English plus the native languages of the area. Again, you will never learn the grammar for all those varieties. English is a very big language, to the point you really physically can't know every part of it.

Therefore, you end up with some idea of what is "correct" and "not"... based on your own language and dialect. Which is why reading is the best way to get a sense for how words should look on a page. You sharpen your own internal compass that way, and gain new ones. This helps your intuitive grammar knowledge get better. As that gets better, you will generally write better because the rules are more automatic. You simply feel out what grammar is, hence why writers don't need to know every single little part of what they write. They just get the sense it's "correct" or "not" based on their internal knowledge.

You can always sharpen this internal sense by learning grammar, but even then, a lot can be trial and error. I don't really know what's an adverb on sight, but I can tell a weak description when I see one. (Writers are advised against using adverbs because they create weak description, but adverbs are not the only way of creating weak descriptions). My internal compass is set to what sounds like it could be better, and I learned that through a mish-mash of methods that included fiction-writing-specific grammar study, self editing, and getting my work reviewed. Like I said, I don't know all parts of speech by name.

Then, you have the prescriptive rules for standard English. This is the framework for written language, which you do have to learn a certain amount in order to write in a comprehensible way. It's also the "arbitrarily determined by ivory tower academics" part of grammar. Some of these rules are about as close to "unbendable" as you get, but that mostly has to do with clarity in prose than anything else. If you can find a way to make the story clear, you can break whatever rules you want. But you'd better be really good at grammar to pull it off.

And finally, you have fiction grammar rules. These are going to vary wildly based on a whole host of factors. For example, "never use a fragment" gets thrown out the window for some people, while others hate fragments. You will also get rules about word use such as "don't use very" and "never use adverbs", while others proclaim "use very instead of using an archaic word" and "adverbs are just fine". These fiction grammar rules are determined based on the character, the perspective, the mood you're trying to create, and what's expected of your genre.

This is where "learn grammar as well as you need to" comes into play.

You will never please everyone with your grammar, because there are so many varying opinions for what consists of "appropriate grammar". You still need to have good subject/verb agreement, proper punctuation, and tenses (remember what I said about being clear and comprehensible), but you can be a lot more flexible in terms of fragments, passive voice use, and how you string words together. And you can basically toss all grammar rules out the window when you're writing dialogue, because people speak "incorrectly" all the time.

Grammar in fiction is a tool to create mood. Short, choppy sentences create a tense, rushed mood. Long, complex, drawn out sentences create a slow and philosophical mood. Lots of adverbs can be an artifact of a first person narrator not knowing any other words to describe something. Passive voice can have grammatical significance ("I got kissed" is passive, but there's importance to that: it doesn't reveal who kissed the speaker). Usually, the rules that create mood the easiest are the most flexible.

You need to be comprehensible, which means catching mistakes in verbs (making sure they're in the same tense throughout), pronouns/antecedents ("John and Mark went to dinner. He paid." Who is he? He is the pronoun that can have the antecedent of either John or Mark), subject/verb agreements (plural subject= plural verb) and general clarity things. Even then, you can simply get a sense for what's right in these areas and not.

A lot of writing— the vast majority— is simply knowing what you want to do with words and being able to execute it. Once you can get the effect you have in your head on paper, and give that effect to a reader? You've learned grammar.

The bottom line is: there is no "right way" to write. There is no "how to" guide for writing. You can scour all corners of the globe and never get a consensus. The most you have is a bunch of opinions on what worked for that particular writer, which might work for you, might not. I personally throw out half the writing advice I read because it doesn't apply to my style, my methods, or my preference. Writers write for a particular audience, and that audience is not everybody.

Not everyone will like your work.

Not everyone will agree with your methods.

Some people will love your work, some people will hate your work. Both will be correct.

In order to be a writer, you have to be comfortable with ambiguity.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sat Aug 23, 2014 10:15 pm
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TimmyJake says...



Just so you know, I don't even know what a preposition is... And my writing isn't terrible. After a while of writing every day, you may still not know what the definition of them are, but you will know how to use them and what they are supposed to do - even if you don't know them by name.

Just a thought.
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Wed Aug 27, 2014 5:01 am
dhyan says...



Ok, so i guess i shouldn't worry about grammar too much. I mean, if i'm cautious while writing i don't make many mistakes, but i feel that there are some thoughts which i can't convey due to the lack of knowledge of sentence structure. I know the basic terms of Grammar so that should be helpful.

What should i do to study sentence structure? Is there a good book or website which i can learn about structure and probably pragmatics? It seems quite interesting, so i'm sure there is no harm in taking a look.
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Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:14 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Read. Read read read. And once you've finished reading, write write write write.

I will keep telling you this. Over and over and over again. Grammar books might break down types of sentences and how to make complex ones, but you will not learn how to string them together in natural sounding ways unless you read. You're not going to learn how to use them for your own words unless you write. Theory is nothing without application.

Reading and writing are literally everything to a writer. You will not be able to say everything you want to say how you want to say it at first. You are a beginner. Beginners don't know how to say things the way they want to say. They can do all the theory in the world, but unless they write, edit, review, revise, rewrite, over and over and over again, they will never improve.

You can spend all the time in the world studying theory. It will not improve your writing anywhere near as much as actually writing will. Mastery is built from practice, not from theory. Applying theory to the practice is the way to improve, but you have to have something to apply the theory to.

Take two people I know. One of them spent two years writing, roleplaying, mentoring others, reading, writing more, answering questions, beta reading novels to critique them, talking to friends about their projects, absorbing writing advice, writing, seeing what tropes they wanted to play with, writing more, and basically racking up word count. The other spent their time studying theory, finding the single most epic plot lines they could get their hands on, figuring out how to tie those elements to their story, thinking about it, studying more theory, thinking about the theory, writing five hundred words, scrapping it because they weren't good enough, thinking some more, becoming bored with stories because they'd seen them all before.

At the end of two years, the thinker asked the writer, "Don't you feel like everybody's gotten so much better than you?" The writer replied "No, because I grew along with them."

Writing is practice. It is always practice. If you take all your theory practice, all the hours you want to dedicate to learning how to write when you're not writing and turn it into writing time, you will get ten times better, ten times faster.

Write. Practice. Revise. Get your hands dirty. Start putting in the work, sticking to stories, and finishing. Write short stories, novellas, novels. Write character sketches, scripts, vignettes, flash fiction.

Write.

And don't stop.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Thu Aug 28, 2014 5:42 am
dhyan says...



Ok, Thank for the great advice. I've put that into practice now. I've made a fixed time to read 1 hour or as long as i enjoy it and write for an hour too, more if i enjoy it or get started quite good.

Also i started writing on paper. Do you think its better.

The advantage of Microsoft word are the synonyms, which can sometimes get me thinking, also the edit function. But I've heard, writing on paper is something different, that it a different type of training, and nothing can make up for it. Is this true? Do you think i should write on paper more?
Writing to change myself.

That will change the world.
  





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Thu Aug 28, 2014 5:43 pm
Rosendorn says...



The bottom line is: there is no "right way" to write.


That goes for everything about writing. It's all up to your own preference.

Just write in whatever way works best for you.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Fri Aug 29, 2014 4:58 am
dhyan says...



Ok, I'll write anyway i can. Maybe more on paper, because that way i'll be able to improve my spelling, and i'll think more because i wouldn't want to make many cross-outs, otherwise the page will look really dirty.
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That will change the world.
  








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