Syntax: Words per Main Clause and Dumping to Long-Term Memory

The
KISS Grammar Curriculum

Return to:
Syntax, Style, and the Psycholinguistic Model

Words per Main Clause
and Dumping to Long-Term Memory

      When they think of "style" most people tend to think of it as something positive -- "She's got style!" In a broader sense, however, everyone has style. "Style" is simply a pattern of behavior. Thus, every writer, no matter how bad, has a style (or even styles) of writing. As a result, every paper, every paragraph, even every sentence can reflect a writer's style. The psycholinguistic model suggests that perhaps one of the most noticeable aspects of a writer's style is the average number of words in main clauses.
      Hunt, Loban, and O'Donnell have convincingly demonstrated that the average number of words per main clause naturally increases with the writer's maturity. The psycholinguistic model suggests that readers can naturally perceive this difference in maturity. They can do so as a result of the rhythm created by dumps to long-term memory. I emphasize to my students that their nursing, culinary arts, and/or other instructors do not count words per main clause. In fact, their other instructors probably cannot even identify main clauses. They do, however, read, and as they read, they chunk words in their STMs, and at the end of main clauses, clear the STM by dumping to LTM. In this process, they "feel" how many words are being packed into STM between dumps.
     To explain this as quickly and clearly as possible, I use numbers: There is a major difference between

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 words; dump
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 words; dump
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 words; dump

and

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 words; dump
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 words; dump
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 19 words; dump

I find that the numbers make things clearer for all the students because, for some of the students, short main clauses are the norm. I do suggest, however, that many children's stories "sound like" children's stories because they are composed of short main clauses:

This little piggy went to the market.
This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy had roast beef.
This little piggy had none.

Readers don't count words; they sense the rhythm of the dumps.
     This, of course, raises the question of how long the average main clause should be. I provide them with the statistical results of Hunt and O'Donnell, and I also point out that, in the analysis of their own writing that my college Freshmen do each year, the classes always average between fifteen and sixteen words per main clause. My suggestion to students is that they want to be somewhere near the average for their group. My reason for this is simple -- that is the average rhythm that their instructors are accustomed to reading, and my students, none of whom intend to be writers, probably want their instructors to see through their syntax to what the students are trying to say. In effect, the students probably want the syntax of their writing to be transparent.
      To be so, they do not want the rhythm of their sentences to be near the extremes, where it would call attention to itself. If they are only writing an average of ten words per main clause, the basic rhythm of their writing sounds like that of high school students. Can high school students understand and discuss the concepts that they, as college students, can? Will their instructors think so? At the other end, I usually have a few students who average 24 or 25 words per main clause. The psycholinguistic model suggests that that can be rather taxing on their instructors. In fact, it may be overwhelming, consuming all the slots in an instructor's STM just to process the sentences. (Good-bye thesis. Good-bye topic sentences. What is this paper about?) And, of course, an error in such hugh main clauses is almost certain to cause problems for the reader.
     Students who are being taught through a KISS Approach can do a statistical analysis of samples of their own writing to see just where they stand. Those who are at the lower extreme can then do sentence-combining exercises to learn how to increase average main-clause length, and those at the high end can do some de-combining exercises. Note also that the question of main-clause length can be integrated with the question of writing to different audiences. Good readers and writers, who have lots of experience, naturally sense the rhythms of articles in different publications, but unexperienced students usually can't feel these, especially if they are at the lower end of the range. A statisical analysis makes the point much more forcefully for them.
       In presenting this aspect of syntax and style to students, it is very important to emphasize that average words per main clause is a basic, quick and easy, measure of syntactic "maturity." Some of my best student writers have averaged only eleven or twelve words per main clause, but they used a variety of appositives, gerundives, and otherwise tightly written constructions, all of which, as noted by Hunt, reflect maturity and eliminate meaningless connective words. Although we do not get to discuss all of these in the short time that I have to work with college Freshmen in a single composition course, I mark them on the students' self-analysis assignment, thereby letting these students know that their short main clauses are fine. On the other hand, some students write short main clauses with no advanced constructions. They can thus see that they both need help and need to do some work.