Just sentences. In this course, we will cover all the ways that sentences get longer—and shorter. We will touch upon whatever we can learn about how they work, what they do, how we can think and talk about them in ways that will help both our writing and our understanding of prose style. Partly we are concerned with stretching our sense of options—all the things a sentence can be or do—and part with the notion of style itself. In other words, we will dance with language rather than trudging toward remedial correctness. We will learn how a sentence’s style results from the strategies it employs for combining its underlying ideas or propositions. Accordingly, our goal will be to learn everything we can about the way sentences combine ideas. Understanding how sentences put ideas together is the first step in understanding how they do things, the ways in which they work, the ways they present information, and the ways they unfold their meanings—and to learn how to make them work for us. It will be done by studying the ways in which sentences combine information i.e. coordinating, subordinating, or subsuming in a modification. We will look at the difference between sentences that combine information through loose syntax and those that do so through periodic syntax, focusing on the generative or heuristic power of cumulative sentences. As our concern is with how sentences work, we will focus on the rhetorical notions rather than grammatical ones, notions that help us understand how sentences move, how they take steps, speeding up and slowing down, how they make us feel, rather than notions and terms that label the parts of a sentence much as we would label the parts of a dissected— and quite dead—frog. This means that we will study the sentence as a living organism in an ecosystem of context.

1. Advanced Writing
Session One
Course Designed By Nima Yousefi

2. Course Syllabus
Balanced Sentences
How sentences grow?
Modification Cumulative Sentences
Suspense

3. Concepts to cover this session
• Grammar & Rhetoric
• Proposition & Meaning
• Kernel Sentences
• Elegance & Style

4. Abstract VS Specific
I got in my transportation.
I got in my vehicle.
I got in my sedan.
I got in my Ford Fusion.
TheLadderofAbstraction

5. After an argument, I try not to stay irritated for long. (Extreme)
I was happy to be selected as first violin. (Extreme)
Many crops grow in the productive soil of the valley. (Specific)
The volunteer’s act of donating her time is kind. (Specific)
The dancer’s fine performance brought a long standing ovation.
(Complimentary)
The baby is cute. (Complimentary)

6. Propositions
“Dieu invisible a créé le monde visible.”
The Invisible God has created the visible world.
1. That God is invisible.
2.That God created the world.
3. That the world is visible.
Noam Chomsky

7. “Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very
edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the
very gateway of Erebus—yes, I was in time to catch an
evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the
spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my
thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered
himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a
proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.”
The Secret Sharer - Joseph Conrad

8. “Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very
edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the
very gateway of Erebus—yes, I was in time to catch an
evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the
spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my
thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered
himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a
proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.”
The Secret Sharer - Joseph Conrad

9. “Why should a sequence of words be
anything but a pleasure?”
Why should a sequence of words not be a pleasure?
Why should a sequence of words not give pleasure?
Shouldn't a sequence of words always give pleasure?
A sequence of words should always be a pleasure.
A sequence of words should always be a pleasurable.
Words in sequence should always give pleasure.
We should always find pleasure in a sequence of words.
Why should a sequence of words not always give us pleasure?
Gertrude Stien

10. The Choices We Make
Syntagmatic
Paradigmatic
Choice of Syntax
ChoiceofWords Paradigmatic: Related to the choice of words or
phrases in a sentence and their level of abstraction.
Syntagmatic: Related to the order in which words or
phrases are placed in a sentence.

11. “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village
that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In
the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and
white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and
blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the
road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the
trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell
early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road
and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and
the soldiers marching and afterward the road [was] bare and
white except for the leaves.”
A farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

12. “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village
that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In
the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and
white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and
blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the
road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the
trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell
early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road
and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and
the soldiers marching and afterward the road [was] bare and
white except for the leaves.”
A farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

13. How Sentences Grow
Predicative
Coordinative - Subordinative
Adjectival
Josephine Miles

14. Kernel Sentences
having finally found a campsite sheltered from the freezing rain.
, the man simply collapsing on the bed, the woman first seeing
what TV channels were available.
They slept
, and they dreamed.
a sleep deeper and more relaxing than they have dreamed
possible, a sleep that was itself undisturbed by dreams.
They, who have never before considered sleep a luxury, slept.
They slept
They slept
They slept

15. The time was early.
The time was morning.
The place was a town.
The town was small.
The town was near the highway.
The boy was young.
The boy was hungry.
The boy was in danger.
The boy did not look to the left.
The boy did not look to the right.
The boy climbed the path.
The path belonged to the city hall.”
“Early in the morning, in a small town, near the
highway, because he was hungry and though
he was in danger, the young boy, looking
neither to [the] left nor to [the] right,
climbed the path to the city hall.”
“Early this morning in a small highway town,
hungry and in danger, the young boy, looking
neither left nor right, climbed the city-hall
path.”

16. He drove the car.
He drove carefully.
He had shaggy hair.
The win whipped his shaggy hair.
His eyes were hidden.
Wraparound mirror shades hid them.
His mouth was set in a smile.
The smile was grim.
There was a .38 Police Special.
It was on the seat beside him.
There was a corpse in the trunk.

17. Syntagmatic
Paradigmatic
Choice of Syntax
ChoiceofWords
Take Away Lessons
The Ladder of Abstraction
Propositions
Tough Guy Style
Kernel Sentences
Intro to Cumulative Syntax

18. Archibald MacLeish - Ars Poetica
“A poem should not mean
But be”