Rapid economic growth in the 1960s tended to encourage immigration.
The elimination of redundancy, however, does not make these sentences better. With the possible exception of number 4, all seem incomplete. This leads us to ask and answer two very important questions.
What is a sentence and what is worth a sentence?
A sentence, of course, is the smallest complete syntactic unit.
When constructing sentences, students tend, probably unconsciously, to focus upon the implications of 'smallest' and forget about the implications of 'complete'. By this I do not mean they write syntactically incomplete sentences - 'Despite some opposition, the motion was carried by a majority of two to one' is syntactically perfect. I mean that they do not consider whether a complete and meaningful statement has been made. This requirement is shifted up a level onto the paragraph, sometimes even higher onto the section.
Thus, sentences are trivialised in many students' minds as simply the bricks from which paragraphs and eventually essays are built. This is a serious mistake, and the root of redundancy and incoherence.
The sentence is very important precisely because it is the smallest complete syntactic unit. Putting a full stop and moving on, must indicate that a complete and meaningful statement has been made. It normally takes a lot of information to make a sentence. If a sentence is short, it must justify its brevity by including information so significant that the reader needs a full stop to take in its full meaning.
'Despite some opposition, the motion was carried by a majority of two to one' is not improved simply by removing the redundancy. The bare fact that 'The motion was carried by a majority of two to one' would not normally be worth a sentence. It should rather be a phrase, 'the two-to-one majority in favour of the motion', used as either the object or subject of a longer sentence. For example,
This concerted mobilisation of popular support, especially among pensioners and homeowners, put pressure on the conference delegates and resulted in an unexpectedly large two to one majority in favour of the motion.
The two-to-one majority in favour of the motion gave the administration the confidence to put forward further, more radical policy initiatives, especially in performance related pay and flexible working hours.
Alternatively, instead of simply removing the original redundancy, the nature of the opposition can be specified and a complete and meaningful statement created. For example,
Despite the opposition of the farming faction, who feared that the proposals would damage trade in wheat, the motion was carried by a majority of two to one.
Similarly, 'Richard Nixon became president of America in 1968' is not complete. We might expect, and accept, something like this:
Richard Nixon, who had lost the closest election in US history in 1960 when he was defeated by John F. Kennedy, became president in 1968, after an almost equally narrow victory over the then vice-president, Hubert Humphrey.
Let us examine how a typical sentence can be built up.
The core of the sentence, of course, is the relationship between a subject and an object as revealed by a verb. For example,
|
R.C. Sheriff |
SUBJECT |
|
wrote |
VERB |
|
Journey's End. |
OBJECT |
Here we have naked nouns, by which I mean nouns without adjectives or parenthetic clauses. You should never leave a noun naked without good reason. There are plenty of good reasons - some will be discussed later - but a naked noun should not be an accident. So let us put some clothes on R.C. Sheriff first.
|
The English playwright |
Adjectival phrase |
|
R. C. Sheriff (1896-1975) |
SUBJECT (with dates) |
|
who had been wounded during the First World War |
Parenthetic clause |
We can do the same with Journey's End to give this sentence.
The English playwright R. C. Sheriff (1896-1975), who had been wounded during the First World War, wrote the famous anti-war play, Journey's End, which depicts the psychological impact of the trenches on a group of young recruits.
All that is needed now is an adverbial:
In 1929, the English playwright R. C. Sheriff (1896-1975), who had been wounded during the First World War, wrote the famous anti-war play, Journey's End, which depicts the psychological impact of the trenches on a group of young recruits.
This is an acceptable sentence and makes a complete, meaningful statement. If you want to see how it can be further developed click here, otherwise continue with the next exercise.
Here are seven elements of a sentence. Put them in the right order.
remained
which needed to use their ports as naval and military bases to protect the littoral between Kaliningrad and Leningrad
stoically
the Baltic States
parts of the Soviet Union
throughout the cold war
recognising the futility of asserting their independence against the overwhelming strength of the Red Army
