7 Comments
Feb 13Liked by Nina Schuyler

Masterful prose, magisterial interpretation

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I'm glad when positive attention is given to this type of adjectival sentences. It seems like so many writing coaches and classes use the Hemingway style as the gold standard and frown on adjectives and especially adverbs. I love the styles of Fitzgerald, James, and Wharton, for example. To me they are clear yet musical.

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In this mid-branching sentence, I missed the return to the base verb after so many intervening verbs. ‘Was here established’ sounded like another modifier instead of the intended base verb.

Additionally, ‘was here established’ did not make me think that the chair was being re-established here, rather, that the chair was originally established here with ‘established’ implying that the action had been done a long time ago.

For myself, many mid-branching sentences are subject to misinterpretation even while some other mid-branching sentences are completely clear; I often wonder what is the difference in syntactic structure? Strength of the base verb? Strength of the intervening verbs? Clauses versus phrases?

I do like the adjectival structure for the vividness that it generates. I also like the personification of the chair in this sentence, as if you could replace ‘The blue wing chair’ with ‘The melancholy recluse’ or other such person.

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Nina- I am learning more about the components of sentences from your posts than I ever have elsewhere. Thank you!

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