Ch. 6: Choosing Adjectivals

I will submit midterm grades based on your work up to this point of the semester, so, if you have below 70% (a C), you will get a midterm grade. Canvas should have your grade up to this point.

Determiners

Kolln & Gray tell us that determiners are a type of “preheadword modifier” and are “the noun signaler that occupies the opening position in a noun phrase” (p. 92). Determiners include the following: articles (a, an, the), possessives, numbers, and words identifying–determining–which particular person, place, or thing needs to be identified. Although there are many determiners, the following underlined and bolded ones are pretty common:

A rule to follow while driving is not to use your cell phone.
- “A” is an indefinite article and identifies one of millions of possible driving rules {Yes, there are tons of driving rules people don’t follow…}.
- “Your” is the second-person possessive pronoun that identifies the specific cell phone.
Dr. Toscano’s cats were well-behaved and adorable.
Dr. Toscano’s adorable, well-behaved cats were orange tabbies. {why the comma?}
- Of course, all cats are adorable (not all are well behaved, though), but this sentence refers to “Dr. Toscano’s” cats and not other cats. Notice this is past tense, which is very sad.
That job I had at Chili’s taught me how hard (and thankless) being a server is.
- Which job? Not this one but that one. “That” is a determiner for job. Notice I could use the first-person possessive pronoun “my” in its place: “My job at Chili’s…”
- The indefinite article “a” conveys to readers that I refer to many types of servers in all different types of restaurants.

On pages 94-95, Kolln & Gray refer to “modifier noun proliferation,” which I usually call noun stacks. Sometimes you can’t avoid them, but limiting their use will make your prose flow better. Having noun stacks makes your sentences noun driven as opposed to verb driven. Consider the revision suggestion for your future Suburbanization Prose Revision assignment:

Moreover, suburban area population growth has occurred while city populations have declined,

suburban area population growth is the noun stack, and it sounds clunky and robotic.
One solution was this revision: Moreover, suburban populations grew while city populations declined,
- Notice how the sentence’s subject “suburban populations” is closer to the verb “grew.”
- Be on the lookout for nominalizations that trap perfectly good verbs. In the above sentence, “growth” traps the verb “grew”.

By the way, Kolln used “noun stacks” in early editions of Rhetorical Grammar.

Prepositional phrases

In this chapter, Kolln & Gray focus on prepositional phrases as adjectivals, which modify nouns. These are the most common modifiers (p. 95). Notice what the underlined prepositional phrases modify:

The man in the high castle published revolutionary literature.
Which man? The one in the high castle.
The coffee in the faculty lounge tends to get stale and bitter by 5 pm.
The coffee at the Thoughtful Cup? No. The coffee at Starbucks? No. The coffee at Solstice? No. The coffee in the faculty lounge.

Use prepositional phrases (and determiners) to make your sentences more concise, but avoid using them to lengthen your sentences unnecessarily. Which sentence flows better…and why?

The car I owned at the age of sixteen got me from home to school to houses of my friends reliably during the school year.
During my junior year of high school, my reliable car got me from school to home and to my friends’ houses.

First, what is this sentence trying to say? I had a reliable car in high school (thanks mom and dad!). Identify the prepositional phrases:

at the age
of sixteen
from home
to school
to houses
of my friends

Notice I didn’t include “age” in my revision because one is generally 16 their junior year of high school. I also dropped “during the school year” because other information reveals that I used the car during the school year.

Please note, in the above sentence “during the school year” is actually an adverbial prepositional phrase, modifying the verb “got”. The adverb “reliably” is a good clue that “during the school year” also modifies the verb “got.” Perhaps “transported” is a more sophisticated choice than “got.”

Participial Phrases

I think these phrases, conveying sophisticated language use, distinguish excellent writers from simply good writers. Remember, you have adverbial participial phrases, which modify verbs; and you have adjectival participial phrases, which modify nouns.

Adverbial participial phrase: Waiting for the bus, the students got wet from the rain.
- Adverbials often answer where, when, why, how often, and in what manner.
Adjectival participial phrase: The students waiting for the bus got wet from the rain.
- Adjectivals often answer which one, what type, how big or small, etc. They distinguish nouns. Which students in the above sentence got wet? The ones waiting for the bus (as I drove by them in my car–Ha!).

In the intro to this section, why did I use a semicolon to join two independent clauses if I also used the coordinating conjunction “and”. Don’t we usually use commas with for, and, nor, but, or, yet, & so?

Relative Clauses

As Kolln & Gray point out, a relative clause is “a structure with a subject and a predicate…[,] enabl[ing] the writer to embed a complete subject-predicate idea into a noun phrase” (p. 101). The relative pronouns–that, who, and which–begin these clauses, so you can easily identify that type. Relative clauses may also begin with relative adverbs, and the common ones are where, when, and why.

We could probably spend days on relative clauses, but I’d rather focus your attention to common usage for that, which, who, and whom.

Use “that” to begin restrictive relative clauses. These won’t be set off by commas and cannot be deleted without change the sentence’s meaning or confusing readers.
Use “which” to begin nonrestrictive relative clauses. These should be set off by commas, and removing them won’t change the meaning of the sentence.
It is generally expected to use “who” for restrictive relative clauses referring to a person. However, you may likely be able to drop “that” or “who” in these clauses without changing the meaning and, most likely, improving concision.

Punctuation

Please review punctuation for phrases and clauses the chapter refers to. Pay particular attention to how you punctuate restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. As a general rule, if you can remove the phrase without changing the sentence’s meaning–often when commenting, making asides,* or adding extra information–you enclose the phrase in commas.
*I prefer to use parentheses to enclose asides.

People often congratulate others on buying homes (as if 30 years of being in debt is something to celebrate).
What rhetorical effect do parenthetical asides convey? (I’m NEVER guilty of this…)
- Sarcasm? (Ha! Unlikely…)
- Bombast?
- Repetition?

Ch. 6 Exercises

Of course, you’ll be turning in Exercises #21, #22, and #23, but try to do all the exercises in these chapters. Homework #4 is the last time you’ll be turning in these chapter exercises, but continue to do them for future chapters in order to reinforce what you’re reading. The Homework #4 review will be on Canvas, but I want to direct us to a confusing sentence from Exercise #23:

1) Many coal miners who work in West Virginia refused to approve two sections of the contract offered by management. They maintain that the sections covering wages and safety represent no improvement over their present contract, which expires on Friday at midnight.

Let’s look at what you listed for these sentences.

Brief Mention about Rhetorical Meaning

In the paragraph above the example, I wrote: “…I want to direct us to a confusing sentence from Exercise #23.” Thinking back to last week, consider the subtle meaning differences among the original and the following (also, is the opening phrase dangling?):

Original: I want to direct us to a confusing sentence from Exercise #23.
Revision 1: I want to direct us to a sentence from Exercise #23 that may cause confusion.
Revision 2: I want to direct us to the confusion (that) a sentence from Exercise #23 caused.

Next Class

Next week, you’ll have Review #2 to turn in on Canvas. Check the Assignments Page for more details. Review #2 is similar to the first, but it’s shorter (600-750 words) because I’m expecting more efficient prose. Also, you must choose a different topic for your review (don’t review the same film or book), and I hope you branch out and choose a different medium (film, book, video game, etc.).

Exam #2 is in two weeks (10/25), and it’ll be on Canvas, so we won’t meet in person. It will mostly cover material since Exam #1, but, as is the case with the final exam, anything we’ve covered is fair game.

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October 11th: Choosing Adjectivals