Itsy Bitsy coordination
Anyone who’s spent any time reading the blog (or the scholarly work) of Neal Whitman knows that English has a whole bunch of messed up coordinate structures. My personal favorite is friends in low places, aka Right-node wrapping. But also up there is the combination of quotative inversion and coordination. For instance:
“No problem,” said the stewardess and promptly dropped a second tray of food onto my foldout table, without taking away the original one. link
The interesting thing being that the stewardess, who is the one doing the saying, after the verb due to a particular narrative convention, but nonetheless acts as the subject of the sentence with respect to the coordination: the stewardess is also the one who dropped the second tray of food.
If you’ve been thinking about the title of this post, you’ll probably see what I’m getting at. The same sort of issue arises with so-called locative inversion, as in:
down came the rain and washed the spider out
out came the sun and dried up all the rain
I have to admit that I find quotative inversion plus coordination to sound strange, and outside of this particular nursery rhyme, I think I’d find locative inversion equally jarring. But there it is.
Comments(4)
I have a co-worker who routinely edits all “said the stewardess”s into “the stewardess said”s. For me, quotative inversion is fine, because “said” is such an empty verb, I think.
But locative inversion sounds odd to me – very highly stylized or something – and I tend to make the second verb a participle:
In ran John and put the letter into my hands -> In ran John, putting the letter into my hands.
That’s if I feel the need for “In ran John” in the first place, which is rarely.
Yeah, I’m fine with quotative inversion, except when the subject is a pronoun. I don’t really like “blah,” said she.
Interesting that using the -ing form lets you interpret the scene as sequential, with locative inversion. But if I read
“Never!” she cried, stamping out of the room
I think I’m more likely to read it as happening all at the same time. But then maybe even with the “in ran John” example, he is actually running up until he puts the letter in your hands.
So is the problem that ’said the stewardess’ is the wrong way round, or is it that, technically, I should have written: “, who” or “and she” after it?
“No problem,” the stewardess said and promptly
or
“No problem,” said the stewardess, who promptly
or better
“No problem,” said the stewardess and she promptly
The final one seems best, since “, who” somehow interrupts the rhythm of her words-then-action.
The thing I like about ’said the stewardess’ is it feels ‘lower’ or more informal, which suits both the chatting simplicity of storytelling and the location (ie. a blog).
Aren’t blogs generally much closer to informal verbal storytelling than standard English?
x
I find the first one also a little strange, or at least it requires a pause (or comma) before the “and.” That pause wouldn’t be necessary if it were just
The stewardess said, “No problem” and promptly…
The version with the relative clause (“who”) is a particular way to advance the narrative, and I would imagine it’s more appropriate in some contexts than others, but I really have no idea.
I actually don’t fine “said the stewardess” to be informal, unless we’re comparing novels to screenplays or technical writing. It’s certainly not a construction used in casual conversation, or at least I would never use it.