Understanding and Teaching Syntax: an Introduction
Nicholas Jackson, nicholas.jackson@dmschools.org
At a recent meeting, the subject of using syntax for analysis and in writing arose, and I was asked to explain
how it can be approached for effective practice with students. What follows are descriptions of the term and
some tactics I use in my classes to facilitate understanding and use of this particularly troublesome, yet very
necessary element of style.
A simple definition of syntax would be the order of words in a sentence. However, included within this simple
definition would be everything regarding grammar and all the rhetorical tricks that can be played with the order
of words within a sentence and between sentences. Many of us were lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to grow
up at a time when English classes at the elementary and early secondary levels emphasized parts of speech, the
many uses of clauses and phrases, and sentence diagramming. Yet, these practices have, for the most part, fallen
out of favor even though syntax is present in everything we say or write. I am here to assure us all that Daily
Oral Language and sentence diagramming and the Strunk-approach of barking grammar rules at students are not
the only methods for teaching syntax or assessing how well students understand the many ways that sentences
can be structured.
Below I have outlined and then fully illustrated four syntactical practices which do not necessarily rely on
clauses or diagramming or an infinite knowledge of parts of speech to study syntax; these tactics can help
students develop meaning from the way sentences are arranged and how these arrangement influence meaning.
These four practices can be labeled as
 cumulative vs. periodic sentences,
 short vs. long sentences,
 emphasis by proximity,
 emphasis using parallelism and repetition.
To illustrate these four practices I will consistently look at Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays”
(full-text below) and sample other canonical texts. I find that using shorter texts such as lyrical poetry helps to
emphasize the stylistic features for students, and Hayden’s poem highlights syntax quite effectively.
“Those Winter Sundays”
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
5
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
10
For sake of clarity, this poem is about a son reflecting on the gruff nature of his father and the indirect ways his
father showed love to him. Essentially, if we were to refine the content into a thesis, we could say that this
narrator regrets the way he treated his father. After each description of the four practices, I will show how
syntax applies to this thesis and how syntax influences meaning.
Cumulative vs. Periodic Sentences
In the English language there are really only two types of sentence structures: cumulative and periodic. Now,
there are multiple variations of these sentence structures which allow for greater complexity of usage, but for
simplicity’s sake there are only these two. These two structures only depend on where the subject and verb (the
necessary parts of a sentence) fall within the sentence.
Cumulative sentences are the standard for English, and they place the emphasis of what is acting or being
described towards the beginning of the sentence. “We went to the store,” for instance, is a basic cumulative
structure with the actor “we” and the action “went” at the beginning of the sentence with the rest of the
information required of the sentence accumulating at the end of the sentence: hence, a cumulative sentence.
These sentences are very versatile for use because they allow for any additional information to be tacked on as
per the writer’s discretion. We can add time to such a structure: “We went to the store after breakfast,” or add
greater detail to location: “We went to the store next to the mall after breakfast,” or we any number of details to
better illustrate the thought “We went to the fishing store near the mall after breakfast to buy some fake worms
for angling.” These sentences, if not properly monitored or modeled, can go off into infinity; however, as we all
know, most readers do not prefer this type of structure at length because it becomes difficult to digest. Of
course, there are several variations of the cumulative sentence when we factor in sentence combining and
introductory clauses or phrases, but if we look at the main sentence and the subject and verb group falls at the
beginning, we have a cumulative structure.
Periodic sentences place the subject and verb towards the end (near the period) of the sentence or at least well
enough into the sentence that the mere structure of the arrangement creates a sense of suspense and drama. The
suspense and the drama, in fact, are key to having a periodic sentence. We can virtually say anything in periodic
structure and it will be full of drama: “During the final minutes of a working day, when the light from the sun
begins to cast everything in that wearied, afternoon tint, I yawned.” How dramatic was that? The doer “I” and
the doing “yawned” are placed well to the end of the sentence, but because we hadn’t gotten to the doer or the
doing at the sentence’s beginning, we wait for this combination in anticipation.
Take this example from Beowulf
Out from the marsh, from the foot of misty
Hills and bogs, bearing God’s hatred,
Grendal came, hoping to kill
Anyone he could trap on this trip to high Herot. (1-4)
The doer and the doing (“Grendal came”) lies well into the sentence, and while some could argue that a portion
of the third and the whole fourth line is tacked on which would make this a cumulative sentence, the suspense
that is created from lines one and two is what makes it a periodic structure. We see marsh and misty hills and
bogs and hatred of God, so we get a pretty good atmospheric description of what Grendal is even before he
enters the stage: he is coming from slushy and feared places (marshes and bogs) and God hates him. When the
sentence is written cumulatively we do not get the same interaction with the text:
Grendal came out from the marshes,
from the foot of misty hills and bogs,
bearing gods hatred, hoping to kill anyone
he could trap on this trip to high Herot.
This kind of structure is very tedious to the reader and it lacks the creation of atmosphere, the dramatic suspense
that the original had before meeting the creature. These qualities are especially necessary when we remember
that Beowulf came from the oral tradition in which the speaker would need these verbal dramatic tricks to keep
the audience’s interest.
In writing, a healthy mix of cumulative and periodic structures is often the standard we use to discuss sentence
fluency, and this is true whether we are reading or writing essays, fiction, plays, or poetry. We like syntactical
variety of this sort, or syntactical variety of this sort we like. However, we also must be cognizant of how the
use of these structures helps the meaning of the poem.
Robert Hayden uses this variety to illustrate his attitude towards his father. Already at this point in the poem,
Hayden’s father has risen in the morning cold, put coal in the furnace, and lighted it to heat the house, and in the
following lines he uses the cumulative and periodic structures to express his distance from his father.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress
fearing the chronic angers of that house (6-9)
This passage has three separate syntactical patterns. The first sentence is cumulative, and this structure merely
helps the narrative along. The father has gotten up to do what he normally does, and the son wakes to the
sounds of the house settling. The cumulative structure is a very simple way of relaying shifts in the narrative, so
it does not draw too much attention to the son waking and listening, but instead puts emphasis on what he hears:
the repetition of splintering and breaking, which will be further discussed below when I address emphasis by
repetition.
The second sentence, however, puts the emphasis on the time that has passed. The son has been lying in bed,
listening to his father’s movements and the sounds of the house. A son lying in bed who is aware of what his
father is doing but is unwilling to jump up and help is either a teenager or not very attached to his father or both.
The narrator waits for his father to call, which may take considerable time given the houses “blueblack cold” (2)
state at the beginning of the poem. So, the drama that is created from the periodic structure is one of distance
from the father. This is emphasized by the fact that the father would call out to him rather than go to his bed and
wake him and also by the fact that when the narrator rises, he does so slowly; but this is a diction choice more
than a syntactical one.
The third sentence (lines 8-9) is a simple cumulative structure that illustrates (1) how the narrator rose to his
father’s call: slowly and, most likely, begrudgingly, and (2) provides reason as to why he would be distant and
slow to come to his father’s call: “fearing the chronic angers of that house” (9). The cumulative structure of this
part allows us to move the narrative action forward and also allows for the subordination of the narrator’s
feelings towards his father. The narrator’s feelings are secondary in the sentence and, therefore, secondary to his
purpose for writing the poem.
Bearing in mind that we want to prove that the narrator regrets the way he treated his father, we would probably
want to focus on the second and third syntactical sections and not the first because the first is merely a way of
moving the narrative along. However, we can look at how Hayden’s use of periodic structure puts distance
between the narrator and his father in the second section and how the cumulative structure of the third
subordinates the narrator’s feelings for his father. If the son truly regrets the way he treated his father, then this
distance and a lack of emphasis for his own feelings (subordination) would be key stylistic features to help
interpret this poem.
Short vs. Long Sentences
Finding short and long sentences is not complicated. Some sentences are short; some sentences are long, yet we
must bear in mind that the author chooses whether the sentences are long or short. In doing this, the author is
choosing to emphasize certain ideas depending on the content of the sentences and the tone which accompanies
or is created by the sentence length.
As a general rule, long sentences bear the burden of losing the reader, so writers who are focused on clarity
choose pretty average sentence lengths to convey ideas, especially ideas which provide context or describe
things. For instance, Gilad Skolnick uses these moderately sized sentences to convey context and explanation in
“A Plea for Bathroom Reform.”
Several semesters ago, transgender students began to protest the bathroom situation at UMass,
demanding gender-neutral bathrooms in many dorms. This was so students who do not identify with
their assigned gender at birth or with either gender could feel comfortable entering the bathrooms
without going into the “wrong” bathroom. (91)
These two contextual and explanative sentences are comprised of 25 words each, which is not uncommon for
descriptive text. Compare this to Skolnick’s thesis statement towards the end of the article: “Gender-segregated
bathrooms are an example of an attempt to hold onto the past” (92). A mere 14 words, a shortened syntax when
compared with Skolnick’s average, draws attention to the statement and, thus, punctuates the main idea that
bathrooms should not remain segregated based on gender. The fact that he also used a cumulative style, which
is more clearly followed, also attests to this need for clarity. Shorter sentences are easier to understand and
readers have a tendency to focus on them, so these short sentences should be noticed for their content.
This is true when looking at epic poems. For instance, Milton uses very long sentences in Paradise Lost, and he
also uses incredibly short ones, all for different reasons and for different effects. When he invokes the spirit of
God at the beginning of the poem he says
And chiefly thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss
And mad’st it pregnant. (1.17-22)
There are technically two sentences here (17-19 and 19-22), but both serve the same functions of the syntax
which are to praise God and ask for help in telling the story. The content of the passage could easily have been
rendered as “God, inspire me to tell the story.” However, Milton is a gentlemen, and gentlemen praise those
benefactors who can help them out, so more room is needed in the sentence to do this. When asking for help,
Milton thinks it is prudent to remind us and Him that He prefers a pure and upright heart to temples built in His
name and that He is so powerful that he made the void pregnant or created things from nothing, so His help will
be beneficial since Milton may have a void of writer’s block.
Comparatively, Milton also uses short sentences to emphasize things. Though pages of dialogue precede it,
when Eve eats the apple, there is very little text.
her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate! (9.780-1)
There are two syntactical structures here. The first would cumulatively read “She plucked, her rash hand in evil
hour forth reaching to the fruit.” However, Milton makes the construction periodic to place the two actions,
plucking and eating, in as close proximity as possible so that there is no time between the act of taking and the
act of eating the fruit. The brevity of “she plucked” and “she ate” without pause and without further deliberation
between emphasizes the image of rashness which accompanied her hand in the previous subordinated clause.
These brief sentences make it certain that Eve did something without fully weighing the consequences.
Robert Hayden also uses long and short sentences to relay information and to emphasize his thesis, that he
regrets the way he treated his father. In the first five lines Hayden’s narrator says
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. (1-5)
Two sentences are here. The first is lengthy and designed to draw sympathy to the father for what he does for
his family. Not only does he get up early, but he does so in the “blueblack cold” and uses his “cracked hands” to
light the furnace for the family. This structure is somewhat similar to when my wife (or a general spouse)
complains about all the responsibilities that she has “I did the dishes, I swept the floor, I made the children’s
supper, et cetera, ad nauseum.” I purposely did not use periods because the way the message is delivered is as a
nonstop thought, layering responsibility upon responsibility until the weight of these responsibilities crush
whatever counterargument might arise. Hayden could have done the same “My father worked all week, my
father worked hard, through pain, and injury, my father got up early even on Sunday, my father heated the
house for all of us.” Yet he does not precisely because he does not want his father to sound like a nag. So he
artfully crafts a long sentence to list what his father does for the family and draws sympathy to these sacrifices
(working all week, waking up early, heating the house) that the father makes for them. Since the son is the
narrator, attention to these sacrifices heap up the guilt that will manifest at the end of the poem. Then, after the
sympathy is developed, Hayden twists the knife with a very short and poignant sentence: “No one ever thanked
him.” That sentence’s brevity is like a machine gun firing. It is startling that a man would do all of this, and no
one would thank him ever, and the fact that the narrator brings this up emphasizes the regret he has for how he
treated his father.
Emphasis by Proximity or Early Placement of Words
Many grammarians like to think of syntax as a series of parts of speech which can be rearranged in any order to
the author’s liking. For instance, the standard sentence “We wanted to go swimming” is no different from the
non-standard phrasing “To go swimming we wanted” or “Wanted we to go swimming” or “To go swimming
wanted we.” However, we can all agree that a sentiment as simple as a desire to cool off in a pool is best written
the first way because it is the clearest representation of the idea. However, sometimes authors choose to
rearrange the syntax of the sentence for emphasis, and when we see these emphatic rearrangements we must
interpret their purpose and meaning.
Yoda is my favorite Jedi. From his looks, to his abilities (once described by a student as “a frog on crack”
Episode II), to the way he talks. When Yoda made his debut in Star Wars: Episode 5—The Empire Strikes Back,
Luke Skywalker had recently crashed on a jungle-like planet in the Dagobah System. He is marooned, low on
supplies, and frustrated that he went in search of this great Jedi master and has not found him. So when he pulls
his blaster on the tiny Muppet, Yoda says “Away put your weapon. I mean you no harm.” The first sentence is
syntactically non-standard because the most important word in that sentence is “Away.” The weapon and the
particular action do not matter as much as the fact that Yoda wants it away from him. “Away” is an even more
potent sentiment than the verb “put,” which is much more vague and unclear. So, Yoda’s introductory speech is
a prime example of how writers rearrange syntax to put important words early for emphasis. Besides, if Yoda
were to use standard syntax “Put your weapon away,” his tone would be more demanding and would probably
be more likely to get him shot.
Milton does the same thing when he chooses to emphasize the fact that Satan was cast out of Paradise by the
Omnipotent Almighty. Milton describes the scene as such:
Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. (1.44-49)
Before I get to the emphasis part, I need to explain that this particular sentence gives no end of trouble to those
who are weak in syntax and grammar. First off, the pronoun “Him,” which has primacy, is often mistaken as the
subject just because of where it appears in the sentence, but we must remember that the subject form of the
third-person male singular pronoun is “He” and not “Him” which is the object (direct and indirect) form of the
pronoun. So the action of being hurled is done by “the Almighty Power” and “the Almighty Power” is hurling
Satan down to Hell. In normal syntax, the main clause of this sentence would be “The Almighty Power hurled
him” with everything else in the sentence being a ruinous description of God’s wrath and Satan’s fall. The
pronoun “Who” also provides difficulty, but once a reader equates “the Almighty Power” and “th’Omnipotent”
and God, the only person in this passage who would defy God would be Satan or “Him.”
So, why does Milton choose to put “Him” first? Preceding this passage is a list of offenses that this hitherto
unnamed character has committed against God. To keep him nameless and to also emphasize the person and the
just treatment he receives at God’s hands, Milton puts “Him” first, linking this character to the crimes
committed, and then follows the transgressor with the wrath he drew from God, which is given a much more
ornate description but is also understood as a just reaction from the Lord. Because of “Him” all man is guilty,
singling “Him” out for a righteous punishment.
Robert Hayden rearranges syntax to draw attention to his father’s selfless actions and to emphasize the son’s
mistreatment of the old man. These instances are very brief, but within the vision of having the narrator regret
his actions, they are very potent.
The first comes in the opening line of the poem “Sundays too my father got up early.” The standard syntactical
structure would be “My father got up early Sundays, too.” However, the emphasis falls on the notion that he
does this same thing every day of the week including Sundays, which is, by Christian belief, the day of rest. So
the non-standard syntax puts emphasis on how hard the father works every day, even Sundays.
The second comes later on when the narrator says “slowly I would rise” (8). Standard structure puts the
emphasis on the narrator, not on the actions of the narrator: “I would rise slowly.” This emphasis on how he
reacted to his father’s call further illustrates the distance the narrator has from his father and deepens the regret
he feels at being not such an obedient and loving son.
Emphasis using Parallelisms and Repetitions
Parallelism and repetition are a constant in syntactical study and are the most readily noticed elements of
syntax. Below is a brief list of syntactical parallelisms and repetitions with brief definitions and brief samples*.
Alliteration
The repetition of a similar sound within a
The silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each
passage
purple curtain…
Anaphora
The repetition of the beginning of clauses or
Don’t worry about the wind,
sentences
Don’t worry about the water,
Don’t worry about the noise…
Antimetabole Repetition of terms in reverse order (A B B A) Can make a Hell of Heaven, a Heaven of Hell
Chiasmus
Repeating similar terms in reversed order
We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth
(A B1 B2 A or A1 B B A2 or A1 B1 B1 A2 etc.) Rock landed on us.
Climax
Using the last term of a sentence to begin the
My arrogance led me to vanity, my vanity led
next sentence
me to war, the war led to the loss of my son,
the loss of my son to my despair…
Epistrophe
The repetition of the ending of clauses or
…that government of the people, for the
sentences
people, by the people…
Repetition
Repetition of a word or phrase or clause or
See other samples
sentence or idea
Rhyme
Repetition of word sounds without repeating
Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered
the exact word; often used to provide structure weak and weary…
to poetic texts
*For a more complete listing look up Silva Rhetoricae, a web site dedicated to the teaching of rhetoric which is sponsored by Brigham Young University.
This list is by far incomplete; however, it brings attention to identifying parallels and repetitions. Yet,
identification is meaningless unless we can explain why they author chose to use these parallels, what ideas they
want to emphasize by the syntax.
We need not look any further than Hollywood movies to find evidence of syntactical parallelisms or repetitions.
In The Goonies, when Mikey gives a moving, extemporaneous speech about why they shouldn’t ride up “Troy’s
bucket,” he says:
Our parents, they want the bestest of stuff for us. Now they got to do what's right for them because it's
their time. Their time; up there. Down here it's our time. It's our time down here.
In this brief passage we have parallel examples layered over each other. There is climax (…because it’s their
time. Their time…); there is chiasmus (Their time; up there. Down here it’s our time); there is antimetabole
(Down here it’s our time. It’s our time down here). This identification is all well and good, but why the writers
of that movie chose to use them is much more important.
In the scene, the Goonies have been forced by their curiosities and the ignominious gangster-family the Fratellis
to follow the trail left by the adventurer Chester Copperpot who was searching for the pirate One-Eyed Willy’s
gold. (I would discuss puns at this point, but that would be a digression.) Most of the Goonies want to get off
the trail and look for ways to get back home while Mikey wants to press on, find the pirate treasure, and save
their homes from foreclosure. So the scene is a pivotal one for the plot: either they continue on into untold
dangers or they ride up the bucket of the wishing well to safety. Since Mikey doesn’t want to move away, he
feels the need to emphasize the urgency of time by repeating the word as often as possible in these cute
syntactical structures. He also chooses to emphasize the difference between the boring adult world, one which is
going to take away their homes “up there,” and the glorious adventure route which may lead to riches in the
catacombs below town “down here.” Syntax, in this respect, emphasizes ideas through repetitions.
In “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden uses repetition to emphasize emotions the narrator feels for his
father and also to emphasize the regret which has been a dormant feature of the poem until it awakes within the
last two lines.
After the narrator’s father lights the furnace, the son hears the settling of the house from the heat that is
warming it. He uses the terms “splintering, breaking” (6) to describe this settling of the house. These two terms
are parallel simply because they have –ing endings; however, the meaning of the words illustrate a break, and
even though the narrator is listening to the house settle, this repetition is more illustrative of the relationship the
narrator had with his father, one that he regrets.
This regret is fully revealed or awakened with the repetition in the last two lines of the poem. These two lines,
comprised of a rhetorical question, are preceded by a very long sentence which is used to draw sympathy
towards the father by, again, juxtaposing the selfless acts of the father (driving out the cold and polishing the
narrator’s good shoes before church) against the indifference the narrator bears towards him (slowly rising to
his call and speaking indifferently to him). By the time we read the closing lines we feel the narrator’s regrets
simply with a repetition of the phrase
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices? (13-14)
This repetition is full of exasperation and full of emotion because of the emphasis that has already been placed
on the father’s selflessness and the son’s selfishness. The repetition draws a clear connection to how the narrator
feels and why he feels that way: he had no idea that getting up early and providing for the family and doing
small kindnesses for others is a way to show love. Now that he is reflecting on these actions, he has developed a
sense of guilt for only believing that love was done through closeness and tenderness.
Hopefully I have explained clearly how syntax can be approached. The most important thing to keep in mind is
that meaning for syntax is created differently depending on the content it is used with. There is not one way that
syntax can be interpreted, but it is our jobs to help students understand how syntax can effect so that they can
analyze and compose effectively.
Works Cited
Donner, Richard dir. The Goonies. Perf. Sean Astin, Corey Feldman, and Josh Brolin. 1985. Film.
Lucas, George dir. Star Wars: Episode 5—The Empire Strikes Back. Perf. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and
James Earl Jones. 1980. Film.
Lundsford, Andrea A., John J. Ruszkiewicz, and Keith Walters eds. Everything’s an Argument: Fifth Edition
with Readings. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.
Milton, John. “Paradise Lost.” The Oxford Authors John Milton: a Critical Edition of the Major Works. Eds.
Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.