Reading Archaic and Inverted Syntax

This is Unit Two of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: how to read a sentence written four centuries ago, when every word is familiar and the order is not. Here is the governing idea, and part two pays it off on the board's own line. Nothing is missing from the vocabulary of an old passage. What is missing is a habit: holding a sentence open while its parts arrive in an order you do not expect. The exam tests that habit directly. Sample question eight prints one line of Shakespeare and five restatements, all of them grammatical, and only one keeps the original's tense and mood. So this unit is grammar, not appreciation. We start with the first move against any hard sentence, finding its main verb, and with reading past the line break. Then three inversions and the reason poets make them. Then the suspended sentence, Milton's six-line delay, and the words verse leaves out. Then the old pronouns and verb forms, thou and doth and the empty did. Last, words whose meanings moved, and the subjunctive, which part two will meet on the sample line itself. By the end you will be able to find a main verb first and read to the punctuation. To recognise three inversions and say why they happen. To read a suspended sentence and restore what was left out. To parse thou, the old endings, and the empty do. And to settle a shifted word and name the subjunctive.

Four entries on the barrier itself: why the order stops you, how the exam tests it, the verb as the first move, and the line break that is not a sentence break.

The same words, in an unfamiliar order.

AIL 0101 Why Old Sentences Stop Modern Readers

A passage from four centuries ago uses the same words a reader knows, in an order the reader does not expect. Nothing is missing from the vocabulary. What is missing is the habit of holding a sentence open while its parts arrive out of order. The barrier is order, not vocabulary, and a habit can be built.

Five grammatical options, one faithful one.

AIL 0102 The Exam Tests This Directly

Sample question eight prints a line of Shakespeare and offers five restatements. All five are grammatical English. Only one keeps the original's tense and mood, so the question is settled by grammar rather than by taste or by any feeling for the poem. Grammar decides it, not interpretation.

Locate the verb, then its subject.

AIL 0103 Find the Main Verb First

Every sentence has a main verb, and in difficult writing it is rarely where a modern reader looks. Finding it first anchors everything else, because the subject sits with it and the rest of the sentence hangs off the pair. Do not read straight through first; find the verb, then the subject, then the rest.

Read to the punctuation, not the margin.

AIL 0104 Line Breaks Are Not Sentence Breaks

Verse breaks its lines for rhythm and rhyme, not for sense. A sentence may run four lines or stop halfway through one. Reading a poem sentence by sentence, ignoring where the lines end, recovers the grammar the layout hides. Stopping at a line's end breaks the sense in the middle.

Four entries on inversion: the verb before its subject, the object before everything, the adjective after its noun, and why a poet does any of it.

The verb arrives before its subject.

AIL 0105 Inversion One: Verb Before Subject

Modern English puts the subject before the verb. Older writing often reverses them, so came the morning means the morning came. The verb arriving first is a signal to look forward rather than back for who or what is acting, because the actor may follow the action.

What it is about, stated first.

AIL 0106 Inversion Two: Object Before Everything

Milton opens Paradise Lost with of man's first disobedience, and the fruit, which is what he will sing about, placed before any mention of singing. The thing acted upon comes first, and the actor and the action arrive later. An opening phrase may be the object of a verb not yet reached.

The describing word trails its noun.

AIL 0107 Inversion Three: Adjective After Noun

Sonnet forty-four has the farthest earth removed from thee, where removed describes earth but follows it. Modern English would put the adjective first or rebuild the phrase. The describing word trailing its noun is ordinary in older verse, and a trailing adjective is not a verb, however much it looks like one.

The moved word is the stressed word.

AIL 0108 Why Inversion Happens

Inversion serves meter and rhyme, and it also puts emphasis where the writer wants it. A word moved to the front of a sentence is stressed by being there. Inversion is a choice, not an accident, and recognising that the move was deliberate turns an obstacle into evidence about what the writer wanted heard.

Seven entries on the sentence held open: the suspension, Milton's delay, the method for surviving it, nested clauses, and the words and syllables verse leaves out.

Hold it open until the verb.

AIL 0109 The Suspended Sentence

A suspended sentence delays its main verb behind a long run of modifying material. The reader must hold everything in mind until the verb arrives and makes sense of it, and must not decide the sense early. Milton's opening sentence is the standing example of the construction in English.

Five lines, and then the verb.

AIL 0110 Milton's Six-Line Delay

Paradise Lost opens with five lines of what the poem concerns: disobedience, the fruit, death, woe, the loss of Eden. Then the verb arrives: sing, heavenly Muse. Everything before it is the object of that command, and the opening lines on their own are not a sentence at all.

Skim forward, then read back.

AIL 0111 Reading a Suspended Sentence

Skim forward for the first finite verb that has no conjunction tying it to a previous clause. That is the main verb. Then read back to see what the preceding material was doing. The first verb you see may be subordinate, so check for the conjunction. The method works on prose as reliably as on verse.

Mark where each clause closes.

AIL 0112 Clauses Inside Clauses

Older writing nests. A relative clause opens, another opens inside it, and both close before the main sentence resumes. Marking where each nested clause begins and ends, mentally or on the screen, keeps the outer sentence from being lost. A nested clause can hide the subject you are looking for.

A missing that, still a clause.

AIL 0113 The Relative Pronoun That Vanishes

English lets a writer drop that or which. The book I read means the book that I read. In older writing the omission is commoner and the clause is longer, so the join between clauses can pass unnoticed and confuse the grammar. Two nouns touching may be signalling a join.

Supply the missing word aloud.

AIL 0114 Ellipsis: What Is Left Out

Ellipsis is the omission of a word the reader can supply. Verse uses it constantly, because a line has a fixed length. Restoring the missing word, usually a verb or an auxiliary, is often all that a difficult line requires. The omission is not an error; it is the meter's price.

The apostrophe marks a cut syllable.

AIL 0115 Elision: Syllables Cut for Meter

Sonnet forty-four prints removed with an apostrophe in place of its second e, because the line needs one syllable there and not two. The apostrophe marks a dropped vowel. Reading the shortened form as the full word restores the sense without disturbing the beat: read for sense, count for meter.

Seven entries on the old pronouns and verbs: thou and its family, ye and you, the endings, the substitutions, and the do that older English leaves out.

Thou acts, and thee is acted upon.

AIL 0116 Thou, Thee, Thy, Thine

Thou is the subject form, thee the object, thy and thine the possessives. Thou dost stay means you stay. These forms are singular, and they once marked intimacy or inferiority, so their use in a poem carries a relationship as well as a grammar. The choice of thou signals closeness or rank.

You for distance, thou for closeness.

AIL 0117 Ye and You

Ye was the plural subject form and you the plural object form, though the distinction had already begun to collapse by Shakespeare's time. A writer addressing one person as you rather than thou is usually marking distance or respect. The distinction erodes across the period, so read it lightly.

Thou goest, and he goeth.

AIL 0118 The Endings -est and -eth

Thou takes a verb ending in est, so thou goest means you go. The third person takes eth, so he goeth means he goes. Both endings are ordinary in older writing and neither adds any meaning beyond the person of the verb. The ending marks who is acting, and nothing more.

Substitute the modern form as you read.

AIL 0119 Doth, Hath, Art, Wert

Doth is does, hath is has, art is are and wert is were. Sonnet forty-four uses thou dost stay and thou art gone. Substituting the modern form as you read costs nothing and removes most of the apparent difficulty of a line, because these forms carry no meaning the modern ones lack.

Did stand means stood, no more.

AIL 0120 The Empty Auxiliary Do

Older English inserts do and did where modern English would not. Sonnet forty-four's my foot did stand means my foot stood. The auxiliary fills a syllable and carries no emphasis, so reading stress into it misreads the line. Do not hear insistence in a did that is only keeping the beat.

I know not means I do not know.

AIL 0121 Negation Without Do

Older English negates by putting not after the verb, so I know not means I do not know. The construction sounds emphatic to a modern ear but was entirely ordinary. Treating it as emphatic imports a feeling the writer did not place there, which is the same error as hearing stress in the empty did.

Inversion does the asking.

AIL 0122 Questions Without Do

Older English asks by inverting, so know you the man means do you know the man. Sentences that look like statements with a question mark are usually this. The inversion, not an auxiliary, is doing the work of asking, and a question may lack do entirely.

Three entries on words that moved, on parts of speech that were looser than ours, and on the mood English keeps for what is not the case.

The sentence settles which sense applies.

AIL 0123 Words That Have Shifted Meaning

Wit once meant intelligence, nice meant precise, presently meant immediately, and want meant lack. A line built on the modern sense will read as nonsense or as something the writer never said. The surrounding sentence settles which meaning applies, and the modern meaning is often the wrong one.

Try the word as a verb.

AIL 0124 Words Used as Other Parts of Speech

Older writing turns nouns into verbs freely. Shakespeare has characters uncle, dog and child one another. When a word refuses to parse in its usual role, testing it in another part of speech usually unlocks the line, because parts of speech were less fixed then than they are now.

The mood for what is not.

AIL 0125 What the Subjunctive Is

The subjunctive is the mood English uses for what is not the case: wishes, suppositions and conditions contrary to fact. If I were rich uses it, and were rather than was is its marker. Modern English keeps only traces, while older writing uses it constantly, which is why part two meets it on the sample line.

That is the grammar of an old sentence, and the habit it builds is holding the sentence open until the verb arrives. You know the barrier is order and not vocabulary, and that the exam tests it with five grammatical restatements of which one is faithful. You find the main verb first and read to the punctuation rather than the margin. You recognise the verb before its subject, the object before everything, and the adjective trailing its noun, and you know a moved word is a stressed word. You hold a suspended sentence open, skim forward for the untied verb and read back, mark where nested clauses close, notice a missing that, and restore an omitted word or a cut syllable. You parse thou and thee, ye and you, goest and goeth, doth and hath, and you hear nothing extra in an empty did, in I know not, or in know you the man. You let the sentence settle a shifted word, try a stubborn word as a verb, and name the subjunctive by its were. Part two takes that mood into the sample line itself and runs the whole procedure on it.