How our language branches right and left
Like many of us in the words trade, I keep learning from Steven Pinker鈥檚 new book, 鈥淭he Sense of Style.鈥澛�
I鈥檝e even had some insight into 鈥減olice-involved shootings鈥� 鈥� the phrase, that is; note the quotation marks.
Professor Pinker鈥檚 mentions of 鈥渞ight鈥� and 鈥渓eft鈥� branching have prompted some research into what linguists mean by these terms. A little understanding of these concepts can be helpful to anyone wanting to put sentences together better.
The branches in question are those of . These structures resemble the mobiles in a child鈥檚 playroom but actually are a way of mapping or graphing sentences, an alternative to Reed-Kellogg diagrams. They would be unusual in the botanical realm in that they grow downward; their roots are at the top.聽
When linguists speak of a structure, they mean one in which the most important element comes first: 鈥淩un quickly鈥� is a right-branching verb phrase. A left-branching structure has its most important element at the end: 鈥渢he big house,鈥� to give an example of a left-branching noun phrase.
English is generally a right-branching language. But it has plenty of left-branching structures 鈥� almost all noun phrases, in fact. Consider these, with modifiers piled up before the actual noun: 鈥渢hose 15 giggling girls,鈥� 鈥渁ny unemployed carpenters,鈥� 鈥渉er homemade pies.鈥�
This concept of branching works at the sentence level, too. A left-branching sentence, in which the introductory material (the setup, a comedian would say) precedes the punch line, can be good for telling a joke.
But a right-branching sentence, with the most important material at the beginning, can work like a train, with a powerful locomotive pulling any number of cars along behind it.聽
And left-branching trees are 鈥渁 hazard of headline writing,鈥� Pinker notes. He cites the Web headline on the obituary of a man who had plotted to knock an Olympic skater out of contention: 鈥淎dmitted Olympic Skater Nancy Kerrigan Attacker Brian Sean Griffith Dies.鈥� This drew a blog commentary, 鈥淎dmitted Olympic Skater Nancy Kerrigan Attacker Brian Sean Griffith Web Site Obituary Headline Writer Could Have Been Clearer.鈥�
Indeed.
Now, back to 鈥減olice-involved shootings,鈥� that unlovely phrase news organizations turned to late last year to refer to a kind of tragedy that suddenly seemed to be happening everywhere. It鈥檚 more compact than, say, the right-branching 鈥渟hootings at the hands of the police.鈥�
More important, the left-branching version puts 鈥渟hootings鈥� at the end, so it鈥檚 available to connect directly with other material: 鈥渢he police-involved shootings that have shaken our nation,鈥� or whatever. Compare: 鈥渢he shootings at the hands of the police which have shaken....鈥� Even with which instead of that, we end up with 鈥減olice鈥� closer to the shaking than is ideal.
The police need to be part of the solution here, but this particular train has got to stop.聽
