Definitions
A sentence in which the dependent or subordinate clauses come before the independent clause, which is delayed until the end.
Periodic Sentence
Neither he nor his brother nor his mother nor his sister was present in the house.
Polysyndeton
When and how are colons used?
To present information. Often the information that follows the colon either reinforces or expands upon what comes before it.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
(Robert Frost)
1. Repetition
(Answer accurately notes syntax and its effect)
Describe the tone of Invisible Man, as we discussed it in class.
Mock-scientific and frustrated.
Construction in which both halves of the sentence are about the same length and importance
Balanced sentence
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, Shrunk to this little measure?
Asyndeton
Dashes shout, parenthesis whisper.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1. Polysyndeton
2. Repetition (parallel structure)
3. Dash
(Analysis accurately notes the syntax and its effect)
Lucky Space!!!
Hooray! Good for you :)
Compound-complex sentence
White chickens lay white eggs, and brown chickens lay brown eggs; so if white cows give white milk, do brown cows give chocolate milk?
(Other than rhetorical question)
Balanced sentence
What is the rhetorical function of the dashes in the following question from Springboard:
How does Ellison's use of language—including word choice and sentence structure—support the claim you wrote in the previous step?
Day after day, the love turns gray
Like the skin of the dying man
And night after night, we pretend it's all right
But I have grown older, and you have grown colder
And nothing is very much fun any more
And I can feel one of my turns coming on
I feel cold as a razor blade, tight as a tourniquet
Dry as a funeral drum
(Pink Floyd)
1. Polysyndeton
2. Asyndeton
3. Run on
(Analysis accurately notes the type of syntax and its effect)
Share an example of a chiasmus (can be a quote from history/literature/pop culture OR made up)
hmmmm?
Loose Sentence
In the almost incredibly brief time which it took the small but sturdy porter to roll a milk-can across the platform and bump it, with a clang, against other milk-cans similarly treated a moment before, Ashe fell in love.
Periodic Sentence
Run-on
Run-ons create length, complexity, and confusion. Often they represent a stream of consciousness. They can create a sense of being in the writer's mind as the sentence unfolds.
"Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there."
(Truman Capote)
1. Repetition
2. Periodic sentence
(Answer accurately notes syntax and its effect)
Is this polysyndeton?
I went to Disney and NYC on my fall break, and my mom and dad disagreed on if the rollercoasters and characters at Disney were better than the NYC bagels alone.
NO
The overuse of conjunctions
Polysyndeton
Send a representative up to the board and write this example of chiasmus on an X
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them (- Walt Whitman)
a. And these
b. tend inward
c. to me
c. and I
b. tend outward
a. to them
Analyze the effect of the dash in the following sentence:
“There was this antique telephone on the desk and I kept wanting to call someone up and get them to come and rescue me. One day I finally picked it up and it wasn’t connected—it was just a decoration.”
1. The dash leads to an unexpected twist
2. The dash creates suspense and confusion and the reader and the character wait to discover that the phone doesn't work.
3. "it was just decoration" relates to and builds on the realization that the phone "wasn't connected."
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
1. Run-on sentence
Answer accurately notes syntax and its effect.
What type of sentences are the following? (3 answers)
"Look at me! Look at my arm!"
1. Simple
2. Imperative
3. Exclamatory