Writers need to understand grammar, especially if they want their characters to display interesting and rich mental lives. When we understand grammar as correctness, then readers have a right to expect that writers flout rules intentionally in their prose or poetry. Intentional violations of grammatical rules by a writer transmits a message, just as does careful adherence to those same rules (a character who insists on hyper-correctness in speech or thought may be written as inflexible or very proper, as the situation requires). Editors who work with writers must help them figure out the message that the grammar is sending.But the people who study the structure of language most intensely—linguists—don’t think of grammar as correctness. Instead, linguists generally try to construct a system of rules that can generate all the constructions that native speakers agree are part of the language. One such rule is our ability, at least in English, to embed phrases and clauses. A particularly powerful type of embedding occurs around so-called “intentional” verbs such as “believes,” “feels,” “thinks,” and “hopes.” So we can write, “John thinks that Janice believes that Tom is at home,” without unduly confusing our readers.
These embedded verb constructions are extraordinary: they signal how we are able to imagine other people’s mental states, as well as those people’s mental states about others, and so on. Some linguists, psychologists, and philosophers refer to this ability as a “theory of mind,” suggesting that it is essential to having true consciousness in the human sense (there are lots of arguments about whether any other species have such a theory of mind). These constructions bear on our ability to carry on rich social lives—and it is no accident that gossip sounds a lot like these embedded sentences since gossip really is about keeping track of what others are doing and where we stand in the social hierarchy. Written characters who never gossip are not very familiar creatures.
Grammar in the linguist’s sense tells us that we could embed any number of intentional verbs without limit. But the human memory imposes limits on how many embedded verbs we could follow (“Jim feels that Pam thinks that Joe hopes that Jane believes that. . . .”). Five? Six? Surely there is a limit, yet the limit is not a matter of grammar but psychology. So all this suggests how a writer easily can build an alien mind that nonetheless can be understood on some level (and that’s always a challenge, whether the mind is from another planet or is an Earthling). Any mind that can handle more embedded intentional verbs would be richer and more powerful, and any mind that only can handle one or two would be impoverished.
So are you using grammar to intentionally or unintentionally create real or alien characters?
Article Name
Grammar, Intentional Verbs, and Alien Minds
Author
Jeff Karon, English Editor | Editing-Writing.com
Description
Writers need to understand grammar, especially if they want their characters to display interesting and rich mental lives. When we understand grammar as correctness, then readers have a right to expect that writers flout rules intentionally in their prose or poetry. Intentional violations of grammatical rules by a writer transmits a message, just as does careful adherence to those same rules (a character who insists on hyper-correctness in speech or thought may be written as inflexible or very proper, as the situation requires). Editors who work with writers must help them figure out the message that the grammar is sending.
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