1. PHRASE BOUNDARIES

In general, the words of a phrase are contiguous: when onecomes to a verb, for example, one can close off an initial nounphrase and assume that it is complete. This is as true of coordinatenoun phrases as of simple ones and is reflected in part in the wellknown Coordinate Structure Constraint, originally described byJohn Robert Ross, that coordinate phrases cannot be 'chopped'—i.e., one conjunct cannot be moved out of the coordinate structure.³ That is, the coordinate structure will always occuras a unit. Milton gives us occasional problems by splitting coordinate nounphrases, moving one part of the coordinate structure awayandleaving the rest behind, or spreading the coordinate noun phrase. Here are a few examples:

(1) his gestures fierce
He mark'd and mad demeanour,...

[Milton, PL., IV. 128-29]

(2) Sea he had searcht and Land

[Milton, PL., IX. 76]

(3) whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,...

[Milton, PL., I. 2-3]

(4) Rais'd impious War in Heav'n and Battel proud
With vain attempt.

[Milton, PL., I. 43-44]

(5) when the Scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour
Calls us to Penance?

[Milton, PL., II. 90-92]

One might devise a strategy based on the meaning of words to help put back together a split coordinate noun phrase—the parts must be put back together in the sense that they must be seen as performing the same function and performing it jointly. Most coordinated noun phrases share some degree of similarity: hence if the noun phrases have many features of meaning in common, they may belong together as parts of a single phrase. Here the strategy works by grouping gestures + demeanour, Sea + Land, death + woe, war + battle, and scourge + torturing hour. A similar problem of split conjuncts occurs in the next example from Faulkner, where the italicized noun phrase is coordinate to dim coffin-smelling gloom . . . but stupefyingly far away from it:

(6) There would be the dim coffin-smelling gloom sweet and over-sweet with the twice-bloomed wistaria against the outer wall by the savage quiet September sun impacted distilled and hyperdistilled, into which came now and then the loud cloudy flutter of the sparrows like a flat limber stick whipped by an idle boy, and the rank smell of female old flesh long embattled in virginity while the wan haggard face watched him above the faint triangle of lace at wrists and throat from the too tall chair in which she resembled a crucified child....

[Faulkner, ABS, 8]

There is a semantic relatedness between the coordinate noun phrases ("smelly atmosphere"), but there is evident here some limit on how long a noun phrase can be held for matching purposes. In the next example, the second member of a coordinate prepositional phrase (italicized) is relatively near the first, but appears semantically unlike the first (because it appears to be abstract) and is for that reason hard to match to the first:

(7) Her carriage, air, now was a little regal—she and Judith made frequent trips to town now, calling upon the same ladies, some of whom were now grandmothers, whom the aunt had tried to force to attend the wedding twenty years ago, and, to the meager possibilities which the town offered, shopping—as though she had succeeded at last in evacuating not only the puritan heritage but reality itself....

[Faulkner, ABS, 69]

The comma between and and the phrase in question makes it harder to see the phrase as coordinate to anything (instead, it looks parenthetical), but one eventually does realize that possibilities are actually places also and that there is a parallel structuring: to town, calling . . . , and to possibilities. . . , shopping.

The other principal boundary problem with noun phrases has to do with a prepositional phrase which properly belongs to the noun phrase. If the prepositional phrase is spread away, as in the following examples from James, we may close the noun phrase and have to reopen it as we encounter the prepositional phrase:

(8) The perception of this became as a symbol for Densher of the whole pitch, so far as Densher himself might be concerned, of his visit.

[James, WOD, II. 297]

(9) but he saw with it, straightway, that she was as admirably true as ever to her instinct—which was a system as well—of not admitting the possibility between them of small resentments. . . .

[James, WOD, II. 313]

(10) The court was large and open, full of revelations, for our friend, of the habit of privacy, the peace of intervals, the dignity of distances and approaches....

[James, AMB, 145]

All of these nouns (symbol, instinct, revelations) are complement-taking, much as transitive verbs are, so that, perceiving them, one might scan ahead a bit looking for a possible complement. In the last two examples (9, 10), the scan is completed after just a few words, but the nine words intervening between the noun and its complement in (8) make it more attractive to close the noun phrase after the noun. That is, (8) should be the easiest to misperceive. (A similar problem occurs in example [9] of Chapter Four.)

Line division in Milton can also be a source of “premature closure” of a noun phrase since, as Milton warns us in the first line of Paradise Lost, he will split a noun -I- prepositional complement across two lines:

The effect of this practice is more a double-take than confusion of any duration. In general, line ends probably do affect our perception of phrase groupings (and clause boundaries)—as usual, they are mainly noticeable when they do not work right (i.e., when they do not fall at a phrase or clause boundary). Many literary critics have noted particular instances of tricky enjambment.⁴ The same sort of considerations apply to line medial caesura: one can expect a phrase or clause boundary about the middle of the line (for many poets). This is a rather specialized topic, and I will not pursue it further here.⁵

Spreading a conjunct or prepositional phrase complement away from the initial element affects perception more than enjambment, however. Partly this is so because the preposition or conjunction is delayed. In general, a preposition or conjunction following a noun phrase can be taken to signal 'consider attaching me to the previous noun phrase', where one would check the prepositional phrase or coordinated noun phrase for semantic compatibility with the preceding noun phrase. Such a check is necessary, for the prepositional phrase could be an Adverbial rather than a noun phrase modifier, as in the examples of (11), or coordinate to an earlier noun phrase, as in (6).

(11) Everything in fine made her immeasurably new, and nothing so new as the old house and the old objects.... The interested influence at any rate had, as we say, gone straight to the point—

[James, AMB, 146-47]

Here in fine does not make a congruent modifier for everything, nor does at any rate make one for the interested influence, so we can reject that possibility and consider that the prepositional phrases are Adverbials. The sequence... NP — PP... is very common, and we must have some such device for determining whether the two should be grouped as one phrase or not. Separating them by an amount of material sufficient to make Took ahead' or Took back' difficult in checking for compatibility will make them hard to process. Spread conjuncts present extra difficulties when the second conjunct could be coordinate to something in the intervening (i.e., ’spreading') material, as in (6), where and in and the rank smell... sends us looking back to the left, checking first the immediately preceding noun phrase an idle hoy (no good), then perhaps a flat limber stick (also no good), then the loud cloudy flutter..., which is not so obviously incompatible with the rank smell.... We can call this sort of initially plausible but incorrect alternative a garden path (see below, sec. 3). There are no tempting false alternatives in the cases of (8-10), and this is why (6) is much harder than any of (8-10).

We can summarize this section by saying that a writer who spreads conjuncts and complements from heads forces greater reliance on look-ahead and on semantic compatibility testing; writers who spread them over a considerable distance strain the reader; and writers who intersperse other nouns which are semantically possible as heads run a serious risk of being misperceived.

2. SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS

Assuming that the phrases have been identified, their function must be assigned. Here, as noted, the position of noun phrases is a primary clue: the canonical order is Subject—Verb—(Object), and hence we can generally assign the first noun phrase preceding the verb the Subject function according to the scheme given above. There is, however, the possibility of the so-called Topicalized order, where an Object, or complement of a Preposition, is shifted to the front of the sentence, giving the ordering

NP—NP—V...(prep)...

(12) What had suddenly set them into livelier motion she hardly knew....

[James, POL, II. 188]

(13) the wilderness closed behind his entrance as it had opened momentarily to accept him, opening before his advancement as it closed behind his progress; no fixed path the wagon followed but a channel non-existent ten yards ahead of it and ceasing to exist ten yards after it had passed....

[Faulkner, p. 231]

This order is fairly rare in Stevens, James, and Faulkner, but is quite common in Spenser and Milton. One way to process such a sequence is to set a strategy triggered by seeing a second noun phrase before the verb. This strategy would identify the second noun phrase as the Subject of the verb and hold the first until we find the site it was removed from (either the Verb is transitive and lacks its Object, or a preposition will be lacking its complement). This we schematize as

if:     NP—NP—V...

then:(O)     S

(This is a modification of Bever’s Strategy J in “Cognitive Basis,” p. 337). Spenser and Milton sometimes prepose an infinitive, which is eligible as a Subject, so the recognition of a second noun phrase before the verb must trigger a similar strategy putting the initial infinitive on hold for matching to its site later:

(14)           To suffer, as to doe,
Our strength is equal,...

[Milton, PL, II. 199-200]

(15)           him to unthrone we then
May hope....

[Milton, PL, II. 231-32]

(16) That hand or foot to stirre he stroue in vaine:

[Spenser, FQ, I.i. 18]

(17) That which of them to take, in diuerse doubt they been.

[Spenser, FQ, I.i. 10]

Note that (17) may be a little harder to perceive than the others because we are made to wait longer before getting the second noun phrase (they), which signals that the initial infinitive is not the Subject. This indeed may be the functional explanation of the fact I have elsewhere observed⁶ that when Object and Adverbial are both shifted to the front, the Adverbial in the great majority of cases precedes the Object (A O S V): the signal that the first noun phrase may be an Object is the presence of a second noun phrase immediately following. Also, of course, if the Adverbial were a prepositional phrase and followed the Object (O A S V), one might mistake the Adverbial as a complement of the Object noun phrase, as in the following example:

(18) And that new creature borne without her dew,
Full of the makers guile, with vsage sly
He taught to imitate that Lady trew,

[Spenser, FQ, I.i. 46]

With vsage sly can be taken as modifying that new creature, but may also be taken to modify taught or imitate. Usually, however, the Adverbial is incongruent as a modifier of the noun phrase, and this misperception would be quickly rejected on semantic grounds:

(19) The holy Saints of their rich vestiments
He did disrobe,

[Spenser, FQ, I.in. 17]

The notion of holding an element until we find the site need not be taken too literally: the sense of the process is that we must find the governing element or phrase that the initial element is in construction with: it is not necessary to assume that we 'move it back' to where it would have been, though I do assume that we notice ’something missing' following a preposition or transitive verb. In these sentences with initial infinitives (13-16), we are looking for verbs or nouns that will take an infinitive complement and find them in hope, stroue, and doubt (and, with a little forcing, equal).

In the case of the construction Ross has called “Left-Dislocation,” the Subject, Object, or complement of a preposition is moved to the left and a definite noun or pronoun appears in its 'original' place. Perceiving these correctly does not involve perception of a 'hole' but rather matching the shifted Object with the nominal or pronominal place-holder. Most commonly it is the Subject that is dislocated to the left, as in these examples (the place-holder is italicized):

(20) That cunning Architect of cancred guile,
Whom Princes late displeasure left in bands,
For falsed letters and suborned wile,
Soone as the Redcrosseknight he vnderstands
To beene departed out of Eden lands,
To serue againe his soueraine Elfin Queene,
His artes he moues, and out of caytiues hands
Himselfe he frees by secret meanes vnseene;

[Spenser, FQ, II.i. 1]

(21) To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who from the terror of this Arm so late
Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall;

[Milton, PL, I. 111-16]

(22) That he was prepared to be vague to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship’s touching, and that he both wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of delay—these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him that his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the simplest.

[James, AMB, 18]

Objects, however, can also be left-dislocated:

(23) All strength—all terror, single or in bands,
That ever was put forth in personal form—
Jehovah—with his thunder, and the choir
Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones—
I pass them unalarmed.

[Wordsworth, Works, V. 3-4.]

Although, technically, correct perception in these cases involves perception of coreference between the fronted Object and the place-holder, I do not think these are perceived by the usual process of determining coreference, but rather along lines similar to the ones under consideration for identifying the function of initial noun phrases: one has an 'extra' noun phrase and is looking for a 'place' to put it, which in this case is filled by the coreferring noun or pronoun. We might then elaborate our scheme to:

then: O      S

What is difficult about the following passage from Spenser’s “Prothalamium” (cited by Paul Alpers⁷) is that the identical noun phrase is not exactly identical, and the effort of perceiving it as the 'hole' for the fronted noun phrase is unusually great:

(24) When I whom sullein care,
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In Princes Court, and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away,
Like empty shaddowes, did aflict my brayne,
Walkt forth to easy my payne. . . .

[Spenser, “Prothal.,” 5-10]

The fronted Object is in this case the relative pronoun whom, which is a subpart of my brayne (i.e., whom = “I”).

Note by the way that left-dislocated constructions are commonly said to be non-standard (My brother in St. Louis, he got laid off.) but the perceptual motive for them is clear: the Subject noun phrase becomes so complex and unwieldy and so separated from the main verb by modifiers that it seems best to indicate again its place in the sentence when the main sentence is resumed.

Identifying the function of initial noun phrases in Milton and Spenser is again more complicated because they also allow the order Subject—Object—Verb, so that the modified serial-ordering strategy described above will not work. That is, an NP — NP — V sequence could be either Subject—Object or Object—Subject. It turns out, however, that Spenser and Milton provide a pronominal clue in most O S V cases. That is, either the first noun phrase or the second is a personal pronoun, which, being marked for case, makes identification of functions easy. The following illustrate:

(25) Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie. . .

[Milton, PL, I. 44-45]

(26) For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,...

[Spenser, FQ, I.i.2]

(27) For her he hated as the hissing snake . . .,

[Spenser, FQ, I.ii.9]

Either the first or the second noun phrase is a case-marked personal pronoun in 77 percent of the instances of O S V order in the first three cantos of The Faerie Queene (60 of 78 occurrences) and in 78 percent of the instances (18 of 23) in the same number of lines from the beginning of Paradise Lost. The minority of cases where there is no pronominal clue is fairly substantial, and we would like to know whether there is any strategy that would help discriminate the O S V from the S O V cases beyond that of semantic compatibility since semantic clues are not always available: in the next four examples, the verbs do not select one noun phrase or the other as their Subjects or Objects:

(28) Then seemed him his Lady by him lay,
And to him playnd, how that false winged boy,
Her chast hart had subdewd, to learne Dame Pleasures toy.

[Spenser, FQ, I.i. 47]

Here the verb subdew takes an animate Subject and Object, so that boy and hart are each possible as Subject or Object. Reading forward, however, we see an infinitive complement (to learne Dame Pleasures toy), and the logical Subject of learne must be her heart (since the false winged boy is already an adept). If we decide that subdew is being used like coerce or induce, then the Subject of learn must be the Object of subdew and the Subject of subdew must be boy. This reading makes sense in the context of her lying down beside the knight and “playning”—indeed, given the scene, we probably do not even consider the other possible reading. Similarly in (29), either Vna or Archimag could be semantically congruent as the Object of seek:

(29) And in the way, as shee did weepe and waile,
A knight her met in mighty armes embost,
Yet knight was not for all his bragging bost,
But subtill Archimag, that Vna sought
By traynes into new troubles to haue tost:

[Spenser, FQ, I.iii. 24]

In context, however, we know enough of the characters of Una and Archimago to reject immediately the possibility that Una is seeking to toss Archimago into new troubles. These two examples provide illustrations of Bever’s point that information from context will facilitate perception even when the inherent semantic properties of the nouns and verbs are not sufficiently obvious to identify their functions.

No such ready contextual clues are available in the next two examples and consequently it is harder to identify the Subjects and Objects of bereaue in (30) and riue in (31):

(30) Your owne deare sake forst me at first to leaue
My Fathers kingdome, There she stopt with teares;
Her swollen hart her speach seemd to bereaue,

[Spenser, FQ, I.i. 52]

(31) Who thereat wondrous wroth, the sleeping spark
Of natiue vertue gan eftsoones reuiue,
And at his haughtie helmet making mark,
So hugely stroke, that it the Steele did riue,
And cleft his head.

[Spenser, FQ, I.ii. 19]

Upon consideration one concludes that, in (30), her stopping means that her speech has been bereft and infers that her heart is swollen with grief; hence her swollen hart must be the Subject of bereaue, her speach the Object. In (31) we must decide what it and the Steele refer to in order to decide which is more congruent as the Subject of riue. One might try to get stroke as the antecedent of it (as an unexpressed cognate Object of strike: strike a stroke), taking the Steele to refer to his helmet, but, on further reflection, I decide that it refers instead to helmet (and is Object) and the Steele refers to his sword (and is Subject): I do not know whether knights in Faery Land have steel helmets, but I do strongly associate the Steele with swords (as in “four inches of cold steel in the guts”). In this last example, and perhaps in the previous one, normal, rapid perception breaks down, and we must adopt a problem-solving routine, consciously considering alternative possibilities.

There is, however, a further sort of clue that we can make use of in discriminating the O S V from S O V sequences when pronominal clues are absent. This clue is based on the relation of the clause to its context and thus involves processing of a somewhat different order, which we will take up in Chapter VI, but I will introduce the relevant notion here, for I think this is a point at which comprehension and perception intersect. The clue can be developed from the principle that the beginning of a clause (the “theme” or “frame”—see Clark and Clark, pp. 34f.) is generally expectable information, and the fronting of an Object is governed by this constraint. Hence if we suspect that an initial noun phrase is a fronted Object (because it is semantically unlikely as a Subject), we may identify it as such if it is not novel—i.e., if it is relatively expectable in the context. Examples will follow momentarily, but first a general definition of expectability is in order. The basic notion is simply that the scene and matter under discussion give rise to a set of expectations on the reader’s part about what might be mentioned next. This set includes the individual most recently mentioned (which could appear as a definite pronoun or noun phrase in the new sentence), other individuals already mentioned (which might appear as demonstrative noun phrases), parts of things already mentioned, and other things customarily linked to the things mentioned such as purposes, instruments, and results of actions (murder→ motive, weapon, etc.).⁸ Following are six examples of this latter type of expectable theme:

(32) Who all this while with charmes and hidden artes,
Had made a Lady of that other Spright,
And fram'd of liquid ayre her tender partes,
So liuely and so like in all mens sight,
That weaker sence it could haue rauisht quight:

[Spenser, FQ, I.i.45]

What is being described is a luscious image which is being fashioned by the evil Archimago to tempt and delude the hero. In Renaissance psychology the target of such titillating sensation is the faculty of sense, which is weaker than the will. Hence one can expect weaker sence in the context of temptation.

(33) Her neather partes misshapen, monstruous,
Were hidd in water, that I could not see,
But they did seeme more foule and hideous,
Then womans shape man would beleeue to bee.

[Spenser, FQ, I.ü.41]

This is part of a description of a naked witch, concentrating on the parts which would most identify her as a woman, hence womans shape is anything but novel. The next two examples introduce a particular aspect of what is being generally discussed:

(34)           She of nought affrayd,
Through woods and wastnesse wide him daily sought;
Yet wished tydings none of him vnto her brought.

[Spenser, FQ, I.iii. 3]

(35)           Dark'n'd so, yet shon
Above them all th' Arch-Angel: but his face
Deep scars of Thunder had intrencht,...

[Milton, PL, I. 599-601]

In (34), if she is seeking him, then one expects her to wish tidings of him—wished ty dings are a particular aspect of her search. Similarly in (35), the shift to his face is a shift to a particular aspect of the appearance of the Arch-Angel. The next two examples involve a different sort of refocusing on the general topic which may have gotten lost in the preceding particulars:

(36) Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd
For those rebellious....

[Milton, PL, I. 65-71]

(37) Warr therefore, open or conceal'd, alike
My voice disswades;

[Milton, PL, II. 187-88]

In none of these examples does the italicized noun phrase introduce an entirely new or novel (i.e., unexpected) entity. The 'marked' or stylistically unusual fronting of an Object in these examples (and see [12-19]) seems to correlate with this sort of refocusing on one aspect of the matter at hand.

If indeed this is the way a particular writer is using the O S V order, then we can refine our basic strategy for annotating the two noun phrases before a verb by placing the condition on the first noun phrase that to be identified as an Object, it must not only be incompatible as a Subject but must not be novel as well. Schematically,

If:    NP—NP—V...

and: -S           (on compatibility check)

and: -novel

then: O      S

Note that this strategy will not incorrectly identify the S O V examples (28-30) as O S V unless they meet the conditions of the strategy. It will not apply in (28) and (29) because they do not meet the first condition (-S): in (28), that false winged boy may well be the Subject of subdewd; in (29), that as a relative pronoun could be the Subject of sought. In (30), however, her swollen hart seems unlikely as the Subject of bereaue and is scarcely novel, given that she is weeping, so the line satisfies the requirements of this strategy, which then assigns her swollen hart the Object function, her speach the Subject function—and we misperceive the clause. I do find (30) easy to misperceive, and this is evidence that I must be employing some such strategy as this one.

An extension of this strategy is warranted for Milton, who uses the order O V S rather more often than Spenser or most writers. Needless to say, such ordering would be very likely to be misperceived as S V O unless it were marked in some way. Some instances are marked by a pronoun, as, for example,

(38) And him thus answer'd soon his bold Compeer.

[Milton, PL, I. 127, see also I. 238]

In most other cases, the initial noun phrase is highly marked as theme:

(39) That Glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me.

[Milton, PL, I. 110-11]

(40) that proud honour claim'd
Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall:

[Milton, PL, I. 533-34]

Note too that on a quick check for semantic compatibility the verbs pretty clearly signal that the initial noun phrases are not their Subjects. One might suppose that the dual perception of the first noun phrase as an unlikely Subject and as a possible theme would trigger the assignment of Object to it. The scheme is identical to the preceding one, except that the linear input has the second noun phrase following the verb:

If:    NP—V—NP...

and: -S                      (on compatibility check)

and: -novel

then: O          S

We are now in a position to explain a passage from Spenser that intrigued William Empson (Ambiguity, p. 208) (the passage overlaps two stanzas):

(41) And at the point two stings in-fixed arre,
Both deadly sharpe, that sharpest Steele exceeden farre.

12

But stings and sharpest Steele did far exceed
The sharpnesse of his cruell rending clawes;
Dead was it sure, as sure as death in deed,
What euer thing does touch his rauenous pawes,
Or what within his reach he euer drawes.

[Spenser, FQ, I.xi. 11-12]

On semantic grounds, the clause beginning stanza 12 could be S V O or O V S. On interpretive grounds, however, the passage seems to be trying to set up a series of increasingly sharp and menacing things (steel-sting-claws), the continuation suggesting that the last is the worst. This works syntactically if we allow the interpretation to impose the propositional structure O V S. Note that the O (stings and sharpest Steele) is a good example of expectable theme here. (Empson’s difficulties were enhanced by an apparent corruption in his text, which had exceedeth in place of exceeden— singular instead of plural agreement—which made it appear to him on first reading that sharpest Steele had to be the Subject of exceedeth—since two stings looks plural—and hence that steel was sharper than the stings, getting the order of ascending sharpness off to a bad start.)

Such a perceptual strategy assumes that an O V S sequence would have a thematizing motive, and this it very clearly does in Milton. I can find no instances of O V S order where the initial noun phrase is not an obvious, expectable theme. This is a remarkable fact and should be pursued a little further in relation to the more numerous O S V constructions. Even when pronominal clues are available in Milton, a fronted Object is usually expectable information if one is reading closely and informedly enough. I will consider a few of the less obvious examples:

(42) [context: description of Satan’s shield]
His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast
Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand,
He walkt with to support uneasie steps. . . .

[Milton, PL, I. 292-95]

Here the pronominal clue (he) is delayed so long as to render it useless (as also in [45]). In a conventional epic description of a hero—which Milton is evoking and parodying—description of the hero’s spear is highly to be expected. In the next example, a view of human history is assumed, making the fronted Object expected (they = the fallen angels):

(43) Nor had they yet among the Sons of Eve
Got them new Names, till wand'ring ore the Earth,
Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man,
By falsities and lyes the greatest part
Of Mankind they corrupted....

[Milton, PL, I. 364-68]

The greatest part of mankind is of course linked to the tryal of man and is expectable given what we 'know' of how the trial turned out. Occasionally Milton will treat particular facts of biblical history as known in the sense that the theme is expectable, but only if you know the story (here I Kings xi. 7; he— Moloch):

(44) Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His Temple right against the Temple of God. . . .

[Milton, PL, I. 399-02]

This sort of drawing on knowledge of Scripture (and classical mythology in other cases) is typical of Milton. Spenser also normally fronts Objects which are expectable, though we need less erudition not to be surprised by them. This is an interesting contrast. Spenser draws on an elaborated and complex body of knowledge (Arthurian romance and allegory), but it remains in the background as a kind of superstructure (e.g., Knight of Holiness = Red Crosse Knight = St. George/ wears armour of faith. . . .), where Milton insists on explicit connection. Thus where The Faerie Queene seems richly allusive and open-ended, Paradise Lost seems all encompassing and containing. In general, then, it is often interesting to ask, when encountering a fronted Object, “How is this expectable, given what I have already comprehended?” We will examine several further cases involving this sort of compatibility of material with its context in Chapter VI.

Perceptual strategies, we have postulated, are useful for making quick decisions on limited information. As noted above, a pronominal clue delayed too long can come too late. This may explain why I fairly consistently misperceive the next example even though I do eventually get to the pronominal clue of he:

(45) There the companions of his fall, o'rewhelm'd
With Floods and Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns, and welt'ring by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and nam'd
Beelzebub.

[Milton, PL, I. 76-81]

The there may also be part of the problem: it appears to be the theme, the verb is quite far away for checking compatibility, there is only one theme per sentence, the noun phrase following there (companions) therefore is unlikely to be a thematized Object, so I assign it the tentative function of Subject (erring). (Note by the way the split Object: companions + one next himself.)

We have thus considered four kinds of strategies for identifying Subjects and Objects: strategies based on serial order, on pronominal clues, on semantic compatibility (enriched by context), and on perception of theme. Each has its limitations. I have described them working in concert in certain ways, but they are probably not all equally important: the absence of semantic clues seems to be the most fertile source of serious perceptual difficulty. We have also begun to see the importance of Took ahead' to the material following the initial noun phrase (is it a noun? a pronoun?) and to the main verb to check whether the first noun phrase is semantically compatible with the verb as its Subject. In the next section we will see why finding the main verb is not always easy.

3. MAIN VERBS

Thus far I have been assuming that the main verb at least could be readily identified. There are two situations, however, which render recognition of the main verb difficult. The first is when the Subject is followed by a participial clause where the participle is identical to the past tense of the verb. In all the examples following, the italicized form appears to be a main verb:

(46) As when the potent Rod
Of Amrams son in Egypts evill day
Wav'd round the Coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of Locusts, warping on the Eastern Wind,

[Milton, PL, I. 338-41]

(47) Say, Muse, thir Names then known, who first, who last,
Rous'd from the slumber, on that fiery Couch,
At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,....

[Milton, PL, I. 376-79]

(48) from the arched roof
Pendant by suttle Magic many a row
Of Starry Lamps and blazing Cressets fed
With Naphtha and Asphaltus yeilded light As from a sky.

[Milton, PL, I. 726-29]

(49) a dimension free of both time and space, where once more the untreed land warped and wrung to mathematical squares of rank cotton for the frantic old-world people to turn into shells to shoot at one another, would find ample room for both—

[Faulkner, p. 724]

(50) High broad clear—he was expert enough to make out in a moment that it was admirably built—it fairly embarrassed our friend by the quality that, as he would have said, it “sprang” on him. . . . but of what service was it to find himself making out after a moment that the quality “sprung,” the quality produced by measure and balance, the fine relation of part to part and space to space, was probably....

[James, AMB, 69]

This sequence will turn up more in writers who use a lot of participials—as our writers do (there are other examples in Empson, pp. 76ff.). Such a sequence sets up what has come to be known as a garden path, though Henry Fowler had as good a term for it in false scent: “The laying of false scent, i.e., the causing of a reader to suppose that a sentence or part of one is taking a certain course, which he afterwards finds to his confusion that it does not take, is an obvious folly” (Modern English Usage, s.v. false scent). In psycholinguistic discussions, a garden path is considered a source of confusion or difficulty depending on how far it is pursued—how far from the main road one goes, hence how much one must retrace—and I will use the teim garden path from here on because of this useful connotation.

Three or four considerations may function to indicate that a garden path is being pursued. First, one will scarcely get started on the path unless the Subject is semantically congruent as the 'Subject' of the putative main verb: the rod could wave in (46), the devils rouse in (47), but the lamps and cressets are unlikely to feed in (48), and the untreed land is an unlikely Warper and Wringer in (49). If the Subject passes this initial semantic screening, we may take the participial as the main verb, but if a ’second' verb follows hard upon the first, the recognition that the first is not in fact the main verb is fairly easy. This is the second consideration. So in (46), up call'd comes fairly quickly after wav'd and can trigger recognition that wav'd is not the main verb after all. Similarly in (48), yeilded comes fairly quickly after fed. But a long delay in getting to the true main verb like the one in (49) would allow the reader relying solely on this signal to go down quite a stretch of garden path. Third, the putative main verb will always be transitive and will always lack an Object; and noticing that it has no Object may trigger recognition that it is a (perfect, passive) participle. Fourth, if there is an Agent phrase with by or with, as in (48) and the second part of (50), it is a good clue that we have a participial, not a main verb. If one relied to some degree on all of these clues, (48) should be easier to perceive than (47).

Many things contribute to the difficulty in the next passage, but primary among them is the difficulty of spotting the Subject, Object, and verb because of the long and complex intervening material:

(51) Her sire Typhoeus was, who mad through merth,
And drunke with bloud of men, slaine by his might,
Through incest, her of his owne mother Earth
Whilome begot, being but hälfe twin of that berth.

[Spenser, FQ, Ill.vii. 47]

Even though her in the third line is obviously an Object, it is not easy to find the verb it should be matched to. One does not take drunke or slaine as the main verb, since drunke is obviously coordinate to mad, and slaine cannot be taken as past tense (slew)—one simply becomes uncertain when or whether one will ever reach a main verb. We depend so much on the verb to organize the sentence for us that when we must hold a Subject, three Adverbials, and an Object in mind before reaching the verb, we are in danger of 'losing the thread' entirely.

The second sort of mistake one can make concerning a main verb is to mistake an auxiliary for a main verb. Normally, auxiliaries immediately precede main verbs, and looking one word ahead (or two, if there is an adverb) suffices to reduce the first verb to auxiliary status. Two circumstances may separate the auxiliary from the main verb: for one, Milton and Spenser occasionally leave the auxiliary behind when they invert the verb and its Object. There is a kind of poetic constraint, however, that the verb normally goes to the end of the line, only very rarely beyond it, so that the look forward to check if there is a main verb yet to come is limited to a few words.⁹ This general constraint also prevents problems like that in (51) where the verb is in the line following the one containing the Object. The second circumstance occurs when parenthetic material is inserted between the auxiliary and the main verb. Insertion in this position is a special preference of James in his later fiction. The material interposed is often of considerable length and complexity, as in the following examples, where we must waitquite a while to determine that the haves are auxiliaries but the forms of be are all main verbs:

(52) The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive....

[James, AMB, 17]

(53) Since, accordingly, at all events, he had had it from Mrs. Newsome that she had, at whatever cost to her more strenuous view, conformed in the matter of preparing Chad, wholly to his restrictions....

[James, AMB, 68]

(54) That note had been meanwhile—since the previous afternoon, thanks to this happier device—such a consciousness of personal freedom as he hadn't known for years....

[James, AMB, 17]

(55) But anything like his actual state he had not, as to the prohibition of impulse, accident, range—the prohibition, in other words, of freedom—hitherto known.

[James, WOD, II. 294]

(56) the quality “sprung,” the quality produced by measure and balance, the fine relation of part to part and space to space, was probably— aided by the presence of ornament as positive as it was discreet, and by the complexion of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed and polished a little by life—neither more nor less than a case of distinction....

[James, AMB, 69]

(57) but he had stolen away from every one alike, had kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in being, unlike himself, “met,” and had even independently, unsociably, alone, without encounter or repulse and by mere quiet evasion, given his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the sensible.

[James, AMB, 18]

One can test one’s 'look-ahead' capacities on these examples. In cases like

(58) had been, he was quite aware, the first point....

[James, WOD, II. 314]

(59) Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognise the truth....

[James, AMB, 69]

it is perhaps possible to look ahead and across, and decide that the 'auxiliary' verb is in fact the main verb, but as the reader scans into a parenthesis like the ones in (54-57) he realizes that he must do something to avoid bogging down. He can skip ahead to the end of the parenthesis, since it is typographically marked, and promise himself to come back to the parenthesis after he has parsed the main clause, or he can put the parenthetical material into Short Term Memory as an unanalyzed chunk, or he can simply stop parsing the main sentence, process the parenthetical, and then return to the main sentence as close to the point where he left off as he can. I believe that I try each of these techniques at one time or another. The second, though the most mysterious to me, is one that might explain why sentences with two fairly long parentheses are much harder than those with one, as, for example, (53): there is 'room' in storage for one held parenthesis, but trying to put another one in before the first has been processed and removed is overcrowding. The density effect is particularly acute when the interrupting material is itself interrupted, as in the next two examples:

(60) What finally prevailed with him was the reflexion that, whatever might happen, the great man had, after that occasion at the palace, their young woman’s brief sacrifice to society—and the hour of Mrs. Stringham’s appeal had brought it well to the surface—shown him marked benevolence.

[James, WOD, II. 295-96]

(61) If she was different it was because they had chosen together that she should be, and she might now, as a proof of their wisdom, their success, of the reality of what had happened—of what in fact, for the spirit of each, was still happening—been showing it to him for pride.

[James, WOD, II. 314]

Here the much discussed principle of self-interrupting processing seems to be involved. Roughly, the notion is that a perceptual process that is interrupted so that another instance of the same process can be executed will result in perceptual difficulty.¹⁰ Whichever strategy the reader adopts will have to interrupt itself in these sequences. Note that the complexity of (61) is so great that James commits a very rare grammatical error—a have appears to have gotten lost.

One last, related perceptual difficulty is worth mention here. One cannot always be certain that a main verb will follow an auxiliary because the main verb may have been ellipsed under identity with the preceding main verb. Hence, when we read an auxiliary verb with no main verb in sight ahead, we may look back as well as (or instead of) forward to see if the previous verb could be plausibly inserted. This in fact is the correct solution in the latter portion of the following passage (the cannot, can part), but the 'main verbs' are tucked away in a relative clause and are hard to spot. The first part of the passage is a further example of the frustration of suspended be, and the whole thing is a nice little coda illustrating that a passage may be perfectly grammatical and in a certain sense quite simple but still be monstrously difficult to perceive if it baffles the strategies we try to apply. The passage is the beginning of a section of Samuel Beckett’s The Unnameable (New York: Grove Press, 1970):

(62)   I add this, to be on the safe side. These things I say, and shall say, if I can, are no longer, or are not yet, or never were, or never will be, or if they were, if they are, if they will be, were not here, are not here, will not be here, but elsewhere. But I am here. So I am obliged to add this. I who am here, who cannot speak, cannot think, and who must speak, and therefore perhaps think a little, cannot in relation only to me who am here, to here where I am, but can a little, sufficiently, I don't know how, unimportant, in relation to me who was elsewhere, who shall be elsewhere, and to those places where I was, where I shall be. [p. 18]

I have invoked the notion of limited look-ahead repeatedly in this chapter, and the examples do I think provide illustrations, not to say evidence, of its operation. It appears in the identification of phrase boundaries, in the recognition of a fronted Object, in the search for pronominal clues to assignment of Subject and Object, and to the assignment of auxiliary/main verb status to have and be: the longer an expected or needed clue is delayed, the more likely the reader is to slow down and adopt a deliberate problem-solving procedure, or simply to misperceive, arbitrarily choosing one path. Unfortunately, little is known about the limit of look-ahead—how fixed it is for an individual, or how it varies from individual to individual. No magical number exists, like George Miller’s famous “seven plus or minus two” for the number of bits of information Short Term Memory can hold.¹¹ Still, the concept appears to have some value for predicting relative difficulty of perception.

A second general principle emerges from the discussions of passages in this chapter. One can call this the principle of functional compensation. Histories of English syntax often include the statement that word order (by which is meant, in part, order of Subject and Object) was 'freer' in Early Modern English, and we have seen many illustrations of that freedom in Spenser and Milton (it is a good bit freer in Milton’s poetry than in his prose¹²). One would suppose, on the face of it, that Subjects and Objects would therefore be a great deal harder to perceive than they would be in texts of Modern English, but, as we have seen, the poets often provide a pronominal clue and restrict their freedom to the fronting of expectable elements. The point is that though some of the perceptual strategies the reader brings to the text may prove less reliable than usual, there are usually compensating strategies which he can develop. The sooner the reader learns to take the clues the text offers in place of the ones he expects, the sooner he will learn to read or 'get used to' the particular work.