练习七 （Exercise Seven）
I. Preview Questions:
1. What is the purpose of having sentence varieties in rhetoric?
2. Is periodic sentence usually a short simple sentence or a long complicated one?
3. How is the loose sentence different from the periodic sentence?
4. Is the cumulative sentence similar to the periodic sentence or the loose sentence?
5. What rhetoric effects can an anticlimax sentence achieve?
6. Can you cite an example of an elliptical sentence?
7. What effects do you think the rhetoric device of repetition can achieve?
8. Have you learned anything about Quintilian?
II. Read the following and decide whether each of the statements is true （T） or false （F）:
In effective sentences the component words, phrases, and clauses are put together not only according to the grammatical principles of coordination and subordination, but also according to certain stylistic principles. There are three basic ones: serial structure, parallel and balanced structure, and hierarchy structure.
First of all, however, we should note that while different, none of these sentence types is better or worse than the others in any inherent, absolute sense. Each works well for some purposes, poorly for others. And none represents an ideal style. A skillful writer uses them all well, knowing when one works better than another.
A second warning: with regard to style, classifications are rarely adequate. The reality is too subtle. The English sentence, like Shakespeare's Cleopatra, possesses infinite variety. It cannot be reduced to rules. And that is a good thing.
Serial structure means that a sentence is built by the simple addition of more or less equal units, one after the other. It exists in three basic varieties: the segregating, the freight train, and the cumulative sentence.
In its purest form the segregating style consists a series of short sentences, each consisting of a single idea. Skillfully handled, this style can be very effective. For example, an English essayist once interviewed the novelist Philip Guedalla and described Guedalla's method of writing in this passage:
He writes, at most 750 words a day. He writes and rewrites. He polishes and re-polishes. He works in solitude. He works with agony. He works with sweat. And that is the only way to work at all.
（Beverly Nichols）
These short repetitive sentences are as strong and seemingly as monotonous as hammer strokes. The monotony suits the point, for what Nichols says is that writing is often tedious, wearing toil.
Another advantage of the segregating style is its potential for dramatic description and narration. By isolating individual details of a scene or an action, the short sentence enables — even forces — us to look very closely.
The freight-train sentence consists of several （three or more） independent clauses. As a style in English literature multiple coordination goes back a thousand years or more to Anglo-Saxon narrative, which is useful when you wish to join a series of events, ideas, impressions, feelings, or perceptions as immediately as possible, without judging their relative value or imposing a carefully ordered logical structure upon them.
In its usual form of the cumulative sentence, a main clause precedes a series — even quite long — of appositive, modifying, or absolute constructions which accumulate details about the scene, person, or event being described, eg:
A creek ran through the meadow, winding and turning, clear water running between steep banks of black earth, with shadow places where you could build a dam.
（Mark Schorer）
Statements:
1. The freight-train sentence consists of three or more independent clauses.
2. The segregating style is monotonous and rarely used by skillful writers.
3. All effective sentences follow not only grammatical rules but also stylistic principles.
4. Cumulative sentences most often appear in description when the writer begins with a general picture and fills in the picture with details.
5. Every sentence type has its advantages and limitations, and no one works better than another in any case.
6. According to Beverly Nichols, writing is by no means a tedious, wearing toil.
7. Multiple coordination has a tradition of more than 1000 years in English literature.
8. Conjunctions like “and”, “but”, “as”, or “nor” are usually used in freight train structures.
III. Fill in each blank with an appropriate word:
One way to achieve sentence variety is to move adjunct phrases of manner, place, or time to the beginning of the sentence. You can use （1）____________sentence structures as well: to get special emphasis, to achieve greater clarity, to break the monotony of using two, three or even （2）____________similar patterns at one place. You can also provide clarifying or colorful details by adding modifiers to elements of the subject, the predicate, or to the sentence as a whole. The latter — the addition of modifiers （3）____________a simple sentence serves as the base clause of an expanded sentence — can be accomplished in two ways.
One is to pile up modifiers before the base clause, resulting in what is usually called a periodic sentence, as in the following sentence （4）____________the base clause is italicized:
When all classes are over, after the students have left, and as few staff members are around, the campus is quiet and serenely beautiful.
Another （5）____________to add sentence modifiers is to state the base clause first, then pile up modifiers after it, e.g.:
They were silent and intent, facing the wind, feathers ruffling, eyes turned upward.
A sentence in this form is called a cumulative （or loose） sentence; most sentences follow this pattern, perhaps because when we start speaking or （6）____________a sentence, we usually think of the main idea first.
Expanded or complex sentences are found in all kinds of communication, formal writing in particular.
IV. Transform the following sentence patterns as required.
1. Mr. Sampson is rumoured to have been involved in a bribe scandle.
→__________________________（a complex sentence）
2. I believe him to be innocent.
→__________________________（a complex sentence）
3. He was offered a professional contract after winning two gold medals in swimming at the 2008 Olympic Games held in Beijing, according to the newspaper reports.
→__________________________（a periodic sentence）
4. The road requires that it should be maintained regularly.
→__________________________（simple sentence）
5. One cannot accomplish anything if he doesn't take pains.
→__________________________（a simple sentence）
