What Happens When We Read, Part Two: Syntax and Style

By Wil Forbis 

In part one, we looked at how writers use words to construct mental movies in a reader’s mind. In this installment we’ll look at how the syntax of writing—the word order and the logic of sentences—affects the reading process. As a writer, you are likely familiar with the most basic rule of syntax that states that a sentence must have a subject, verb and object.

Interpreting Word Order
Let’s revisit one of our example sentences from part one.

Col. Tom McDaniels reached for the Berretta M9.

This sentence makes perfect sense and evokes a scene that plays out in our mind’s eye. Let’s switch the words in the sentence around a bit.

Col. Tom McDaniels Berretta M9 the for reached.

Hmm, doesn’t make much sense anymore, does it? It’s doubtful you can construct a mental movie for this sentence. So we easily can see that the order of words—the sentence syntax—is key to the process of decoding a sentence’s meaning.

When we read, we are constantly applying the rules of language syntax to the text. We rarely do this consciously (perhaps only when we are learning a new language) and we don’t necessarily know the rules of syntax in the sense that we can explain them. We simply know that one sentence works and another one doesn’t. Linguists such as Noam Chomsky and Ray Jackendoff have spent decades formulating theories about how and why these intuited rules of syntax live in our brains.

This is not to say there’s only one way to write a sentence. Consider…

The Berretta M9 was reached for by Col. Tom McDaniels.

Or….

Reached for the Berretta M9 did Col. Tom McDaniels.

The first sentence is an example of the much-derided passive voice and the second sounds like it was spoken by Yoda, but they do convey meaning. We instantly switch the syntactic rules we are using to match these new sentences.

While it might seem that reading a single sentence is the easiest thing in the world, in fact, quite a lot is going on under the hood. Our brain has to map each word to the concept it represents and we also have to understand each word’s role in the syntactic structure of the sentence. The human computer is hard at work here.

The computer can be tricked though. The aforementioned linguist, Ray Jackendoff, in his book “Consciousness and the Computational Mind,” has an example of a sentence that befuddles the brain. It reads, “The horse raced past the barn fell.” The phrases “The horse raced past the barn” and the “the barn fell” make sense, but when glued together in this way their meaning collapses. It’s only by stopping and reading again from the beginning do most people get the implied meaning: The horse, the one had been raced past the barn, fell.

The fact that our reading brain can be tricked in this way suggests that we are assembling meaning from a sentence as we go as opposed to reading the complete sentence and then parsing its meaning. Jackendoff’s sentence makes perfect sense until the last word, at which point it disintegrates.

Clauses
We should note that that these intuited rules of order apply not just to individual words but to groups of words, i.e. sentence phrases and clauses. Observe the following.

While his chest was pumping with adrenaline, Col. Tom McDaniels reached for the Berretta M9.

We associate the first clause (“While his chest was pumping with adrenaline”) with the subject of the sentence, Col. Tom McDaniels. If we move that clause to the end, the sentence becomes unwieldy.

Col. Tom McDaniels reached for the Berretta M9, while his chest was pumping with adrenaline.

We have to read that final clause and then retroactively apply it to the subject of the sentence. While the sentence is still readable, our intuited rules of syntax complain.

Changing Styles of Syntax
The preferred style of English language syntax has changed dramatically over the years. Take a look at this sentence, penned by Edgar Allan Poe in 1842, from his story, “The Masque of the Red Death.”

When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.

This is not, I think you’ll agree, a sentence you would see written now. Poe demands that the reader keep several observations in mind while parsing the sentence. We might say the syntax/word order here is very advanced, though some would say it’s too advanced.

For contrast, let’s look at the first sentence in Elmore Leonard’s 1981 novel, “Split Images.”

In the winter of 1981 a multimillionaire by the name of Robinson Daniels shot a Haitian refugee who had broken into his home in Palm Beach.

By today’s standards, this sentence is much smoother and digestible.

I’m not saying one style is better than the other, but merely that the style of sentence syntax has changed dramatically over the years. We’ve gone from ornate, multi-clause syntax to a simpler, more direct style. Poe’s sentence above would likely be broken into two or more sentences today.

Write for Your Audience
As a writer considering syntax style, you have to know your audience, much the way you do when choosing vocabulary. Dense, complex sentences will turn off certain groups of readers but be appreciated by others. And the reverse is true. Are you writing for the literary crowd, or readers picking out a novel in an airport bookstore? And what are the limits of your abilities with syntax? These concerns all have to be taken into account.

Word semantics and syntax are the nuts and bolts of the reading process. But, while readers’ brains are absorbing the basic meaning of sentences, they are also tracking the larger narrative—who the characters are, what their goals and personalities are, what their tools and possessions are, how is time is progressing in the story, etc. We’ll discuss this is our next and final section, posted in seven days.