After Jespersen:
Nexus & Modification

Ed Vavra
Pennsylvania College of Technology
A paper presented at the Fifth Annual Conference of the NCTE Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar, August 12 & 13, 1994. Illinois State University, Normal, IL. 

Students don't like grammar, and for good reason. Much of their educational experience in English, in spite of NCTE, has been spent in learning grammatical rules and definitions, most of which they cannot use. Who wants to memorize useless information? The fault, I would suggest, is not in the students, but in those of us who believe that grammar should be taught. One of our primary problems is that we cannot agree on what ALL students should be taught, and why.

During the past decade as editor of Syntax in the Schools, I have seen numerous articles, conference presentations, and books, few of which address this question. I have, of course, seen many presentations about what a particular instructor believes that his or her particular students should study. Thus I have heard professors of future English teachers explain how they teach their students transformational grammar. But I have yet to see a comprehensive presentation of what these professors expect their future teachers to DO with this transformational grammar. I have also heard many arguments for a variety of grammars - traditional, structural, systemic, transformational, etc. In fact, some of the most heated discussions I have heard have been about which terms should be used.

All of these discussions, I would suggest, miss the point of the problem. For one thing, they overlook the fact that different grammars were developed for different purposes. Early English grammarians created grammars to teach "correct," upper-class English to an upwardly mobile society. Structural grammars were developed to record and study unknown and dying (primarily American Indian) languages. The creators of these grammars often did not even understand the language for which they created a grammar. Transformational grammars, on the other hand, were developed to explore how the human mind generates sentences -- that is why they are often called "transformational/generative." NONE of these grammars was developed to help native speakers of English understand how the English language works. And that, I would suggest, is what our students (all of them) need. They need a pedagogical, not a scholarly grammar.

By "pedagogical" I do not mean the hybrid or traditional grammars (such as Warriner's) that are currently and widely used. These books have the wrong purpose, i.e., they attempt to teach the "rules" of grammar, piecemeal. Rarely can students ever move from the simplistic sentences in these books to the complicated creations of their own writing. But instead of explaining what I do not mean, perhaps I should turn to what I do: I want to suggest that two concepts ("nexus" and "junction") developed by Otto Jespersen should be at the core of any pedagogical grammar.

The KISS Principle, Nexus and Junction

"KISS," for anyone unfamiliar with it, stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Most pedagogical grammars are too complicated. In many textbooks, for example, it is not at all unusual to find separate sections for compound subjects, compound verbs, compound objects, compound clauses, etc. The implication of this is that some things can be compounded and some cannot. Since I cannot think of any construction in English which cannot be compounded, why don't we replace all these sections with one simple rule: "Any construction can be compounded"? I can see some of my colleagues searching their brains for exceptions, but I would suggest that they have the wrong hat on. Scholarly grammars are meant to deal with all the possible exceptions; a pedagogical grammar should create a basic framework. Students (K - college) are not going to go looking for exceptions to the rule. On the other hand, they will probably be pleased with it, since it probably reduces the size of their grammar texts by about 10%. It is, in essense, an application of Occam's razor: one rule that will do the work of five is better than the five. Jespersen's nexus and junction can be an even better point for simplifying pedagogical grammar.

When asked what grammar students should study, Noam Chomsky suggested Jespersen's. (Davis 165-66) One of the last great traditional grammarians, Jespersen was already working in the direction of the structuralists, that is, instead of simply classifying constructions, he was beginning to explore the relationships among them within sentences. Having completed his discussion of what he called the "three ranks," he wrote:

Jespersen never defines either junction or nexus. (Perhaps a lesson we should learn from him?) Instead, he explores the concepts through examples. In essence, "junction" is what we commonly call "modification." But "nexus" is a concept for which English grammar did not have a name. Jespersen closes with: 
        1. the dog barks                Happy the man, whose...

        2. when the dog barks           However great the loss

        3. Arthur, whom they say 

                is kill'd

        4. I hear the dog bark          he makes her happy

        5. count on him to come         with the window open

        6. for you to call              violati hospites

        7.he is believed to be          she was made happy

                 guilty         

        8. the winner to spend          everything considered

        9. the doctor's arrival         the doctor's cleverness

        10. I dance!                    He a gentleman! (131)
Although I have questions about a few of Jespersen's examples, I want to suggest that "nexus" denotes the relationship between a verb, its subject(s) and its complement(s), even if the verb is not present in what the transformationalists refer to as "surface structure." "Nexus," in other words, denotes the basic S / V / C structure of the English sentence.

After Jespersen

Nexus is the driving force of the English language, even the oral language. If my wife says "bread," I would be totally perplexed unless the situation supplied a subject and verb: "(You) buy bread." "Do you want bread?" "(You) pass the bread." This suggests that syntactic connections are not all equal -- some (nexal) are stronger than others (junctions). To make sense, verbs have to have subjects, and some verbs have to have complements. To demonstrate this, we can consider having heard someone say, "He bought." Having heard this, we would tend to ask "bought what?" We would not, on the other hand, ask "bought where?" We expect the nexal pattern to be completed. If we get modification ("at the store"), we, of course, understand it, but we do not necessarily expect it. Particularly in written texts, nexus is the engine which leads the reader through the text. Junctions go along for the ride. (If you prefer a different metaphor, nexus is the skeleton and junction is the flesh.) Except for interjections, EVERY word in EVERY sentence participates in either nexus or modification. Since modification is generally understood, I want to focus on nexus.

Although traditionally grammarians have considered sentences to be binary (S/V or subject and predicate), it is easier for students to view the sentence pattern as S/V/C (subject / verb / complement). When I presented this idea at a conference, one linguist objected that I cannot do this because the pattern of sentences "IS" S/V. My questions, quite simply, are "according to whom?" and "for what reasons?" As I noted at the beginning of this paper, there are a number of different grammars, and the adherents of each of them claim that the language "is" whatever their grammar says it is. Their definitions work, within the areas for which their grammars were developed. But thus far, we have been unable to develop an effective pedagogical grammar. In what follows, I will try to rely partially on Jespersen and partially on my readers' common sense, to suggest that including the complement in the nexal pattern will make syntax much easier for students to understand.

Some readers will object that the complement cannot be included because not all verbs will allow complements. This objection confuses mental patterns with their material realizations. Blueprints for a house may include windows, doors, porches and many other things that a builder decides not to include. Failure to include these things does not make the blueprints stupid or nonsensical. Humans simply understand that these things, in this case, were not needed or desired. Similarly, in "He runs every day." readers understand that "runs" does not require a complement. Linguists have even developed a term for such missing, or "zero" elements. Thus "He runs every day" has an S/V/C pattern with a zero complement.

In surface structures, zero elements can even occupy the subject and verb slots. Imperatives, for example, have zero subjects: "Close the door." Less frequent, but totally acceptable, is the zero verb, which is used most frequently when the verb in a second clause repeats that in the first: "Mary brought the fishing poles; Bob, the lunch." Students will, in other words, have to deal with missing (or zero) elements of the S/V/C pattern, even if we do not make the complement an equal element of the nexal pattern.

The essence of nexus, of course, is the verb, whether finite or verbal. Finite verbs are those that are traditionally underlined twice; all other verbs in sentences are verbals and must function as either an infinitive, a gerund, or a gerundive. What I want to suggest is that EVERY verb, in context, can be viewed as the center of a nexal pattern. For students, this means that one set of rules applies to ALL verbs; they do not need to learn one set for finite verbs, an entirely different set for infinitives, still another for gerunds, and still another for gerundives.

Infinitives

Jespersen gives numerous examples of infinitives used in nexus, among them (130): Note that Jespersen includes complements ("guilty," "happy") as part of the nexus. Extending Jespersen's direction, we can easily consider the following to be examples of nexus based on an infinitive: In each of these examples (and in many cases that become more complicated) the nexal pattern can simply be considered as an infinitive phrase. Such phrases can function in any way that infinitives can. (In these cases, of course, they are all direct objects of the preceding verb.) In (A), "dog" is the subject and "cat" is the direct object of the infinitive "chase." In (B), the infinitive itself is ellipsed, as in Jespersen's "her happy." "Bill" is the subject, and "president" is the predicate noun in the S/V/C infinitve pattern. I included (C) and (D) as a reminder that logical (or semantic) parts of the pattern are always implied: if I wanted someone else to get a hotdog, that person would have to have been included in the pattern: "I wanted Bill to get a hotdog."

Pedagogically, an advantage of nexus is that it eliminates the need for "objective" and "subjective" complements, two concepts which I never understood. (And if I don't, I don't imagine that many students find them easy either.) Martha is great friend, and if I pick on her it is simply because I'd rather read her books than someone else's. Here is how Martha defined "objective complement":

Then, of course, students have to deal with "subjective complements": When I said that I find these complements confusing, it was not simply that such explanations are usually verbose, repetitive, filled with jargon, and incomplete. (Which subject does the subjective complement rename, the subject of the finite verb, or the subject of the infinitive? If you already think you understand these concepts, then you think you know the answer. But students, I would suggest, are lost.)

To me, the concepts of objective and subjective complements simply do not make sense, no matter whose explanation I read. Let's agree that a complement "completes the idea of the verb." "Exciting," to me, does not complete the idea of "found": the sentence does not mean "I found exciting." Rather, "exciting" completes the idea of the ellipsed "to be": "I found the play *to be* exciting." Moreover, if we consider "exciting" to be an objective complement, then "play" is the direct object. But now we find ourselves in a situation in which the direct object does NOT "complete the action of the verb." The sentence does not mean "I found (discovered) the play." It means "I found the play exciting," which is exactly what we see if we consider "play exciting" as an infinitive phrase with the infinitive ellipsed. The S/V/C pattern of verbals not only allows us to discard the concepts of objective and subjective complements, it also aligns the grammatical explanation with the meaning of the sentence.

Gerunds

In discussing gerunds and nexus, Jespersen gives as examples "happing in having found a friend" (140) and "He insisted on the chamber carrying out his policy" (141). Notice that here too the complements are considered as part of the nexus and that nexus includes the subject of the gerund. As far as I know, this concept is not very distant from traditional explanations of such sentences as: Note that the subject of the second example is not simply the gerund, it is the gerund phrase, i.e., the entire nexal pattern. For people who are overweight, eating may not be good for their health, but eating apples probably is.

Actually, I don't foresee many objections to what I have said about gerunds. My students, however, are often surprised that gerunds can have subjects and complements. Their surprise is the result of the "multiply-the-rules-and-concepts" approach of traditional grammar. They wouldn't be surprised if more of our instruction focussed on the underlying patterns (S/V/C) rather than on a plethora of rules and exceptions.

Gerundives

Jespersen doesn't consider gerundives (often called "participles") in his discussion of nexus, for the simple reason that gerundives are modifiers. As verbals, hence verbs, they are, however, still the center of an S/V/C pattern, the subject being whatever is modified: "They saw the laundry hanging on the line." Since many of the dangling/misplaced modifiers in students' writing result from the detachment of the "participle" from its subject, I would suggest that having students focus on the S/V/C pattern of verbs would allieviate their problem.

Some grammarians argue that participles function adverbially, as in "They were having fun playing kickball." Although these grammarians have a good grammatical argument, I have yet to see a sentence in which a student made a mistake with the adverbial function of a participle. I therefore emphasize that "gerundives function as adjectives."

Noun Absolutes

A noun absolute is usually defined as a noun plus participle (often ellipsed) that functions, usually, as an adverb. Jespersen's examples of nexus include noun absolutes: "everything considered" (131), "with the window open" (131), and "She sat, her hands crossed on her lap" (127). Most grammar books note that noun absolutes can also function as nouns, as in Jespersen's example of the prepositional phrase "with the window *being* open." Many years ago, a student pointed out to me that, given the concept of nexus, the noun absolute is often a better explanation for sentences such as "They saw the windmill turning." We had just analyzed the sentence in class, and someone had said that "windmill" is the direct object of "saw" and that "turning" is a gerundive modifying "windmill." But a bright young lady in the back objected. The sentence does not, she said, mean that "They saw the windmill." Nor does it mean that "They saw the turning." It means that "They saw the windmill turning." "Windmill turning" is thus a noun absolute used as the direct object of "saw." In that this grammatical description more closely reflects the meaning of the sentence, I not only think that this student was right, I have used her explanation ever since.

The Basic Sentence Pattern -- S / V / C

If we return, for a moment, to the basic sentence pattern of English, I would suggest that the preceding discussion has suggested the value of considering S / V / C as THE basic sentence pattern. Jespersen includes the complement in nexus, and the concept provides students with one simple pattern to explain a variety of verbals. But the concept also provides students with an easier way of understanding basic sentence structure -- ONE pattern, with four basic variations, explains almost all sentences.

The variations, of course, are in the complement. And just as they learn to identify subjects by making a question with "What" and the verb, so they can find the complement(s) with the question "verb + what?" Thereafter, a simple sequence can help them identify which variation they are dealing with:

1. If nothing answers the question "verb + what?", there is no complement, i.e., the sentence has a zero complement.

2. Next, they should check to see if whatever answers the question is an adjective. If it is, the complement is a Predicate Adjective.

3. If whatever answers the question is not an adjective, they should next check to see if the answer renames the subject and if the verb indicates an equality (of any kind) between the subject and the complement. If it does, then the complement is a Predicate Noun, as in "Sleeping children resemble angels."

4. If the complement is not a Predicate Noun, they should check to see if it indicates "to or for whom" the verb is done. This question catches Indirect Objects.

5. If none of the above apply, the complement has to be a Direct Object.

Although the preceding procedure may seem complicated at first, students can easily learn it, as they must anyway. In traditional grammar, the only way to determine what "tall" is in "She grew tall" is to realize that "tall" is an adjective. Note too that this procedure shifts attention away from types of verbs (transitive, intransitive, and linking) and onto the underlying pattern embedded in a particular sentence (which is what we must use anyway to determine if many verbs are transitive, intransitive, or linking). I almost believe that pedagogical grammar could simply ignore these three categories.

One final argument can be made for S / V / C as the basic sentence pattern.* Traditional grammar, as well as almost all linguistic grammars, views the sentence as bipartite (S / V) and then considers the complement as a subordinate aspect of the verb: Verb phrase = V + complement. This results in a two-tiered diagram of the pattern: 

                        S             V

                                    V   C
This diagram does not make sense with S / V / PN sentences, since the essence of such sentences is to indicate an equality between the subject and the complement. (Clinton is President; that is an apple; summer is my favorite season.) How can the complement be equal in meaning if it is on a subordinate level in the pattern? The S / V / C sentence pattern thus puts the complement on an equal level with the subject, where, I would suggest, it logically belongs.

Whose grammar?

Many linguists and grammarians will disagree with the concepts I have presented. But my questions, and I hope yours, are "For whom are we developing a grammar?" "And for what purpose?" There is general agreement that the traditional, structural, transformational, etc. grammars that have been tried in the classroom have not worked very well. I am suggesting that the reasons for that are that these grammars have been developed by people interested in grammar and that these grammars have not been developed with the express aim of assisting native speakers of English get a conscious control of the grammar that they already use. Students are not interested in these grammars because the grammars are too complicated and too focussed on exceptions and problem areas. The concept of nexus, on the other hand, simplifies grammar, applies to every verb, and in some cases provides a more logical fit between the sentence being analyzed and the explanation.

One of the reasons that grammatical instruction in our schools has been so ineffective is that students (and teachers) have spent so much time on grammar books, rules, and definitions, that they have rarely adventured into the fascinating world of analyzing how sentences work in their own reading and writing. The concepts of nexus and modification not only simplify grammar, they also provide important tools for such analysis. There is no better way to close this presentation than with the words of Jespersen:

* I remember a conference where I mentioned the idea that the basic sentence pattern is S/V/C, and not S/V . Someone objected, on the grounds that the basic sentence pattern simply IS S/V. Unfortunately, there was not time for prolonged discussion of how the objecter knew that it "simply is," and perhaps the objection is the result of fundamental differences in how we (he and I) perceive reality. I was reminded of the objection in my recent reading of Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics. Capra discusses a similar problem when classical physicists were first exploring sub-atomic phenomena. Their concepts ("space," "time," "causation," "wave," "particle,"etc.) were leading them to confusing contradictions. Finally, someone suggested that their concepts (terms?) were simply maps of the terrain (physical reality). Once physicists were able to distinguish their maps from reality, physics began to make progress.

As many of us know, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of different grammars of English. Will the "real" grammar please stand up? Such a question is like asking which is the real map of the United States, a map of the cities and states, or a map of its geography. Neither question makes sense, because the maps are not the terrain. All I am suggesting, for the reasons explained in this section, is that an S/V/C map of grammar makes more pedagogical sense than does an S/V map.

Works Cited

Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics. NY: Bantam, 1975.

Davis, Frederica, "In Defense of Grammar" English Education. Oct. 1984. 161-64, followed by Noam Chomsky's letter to her, pp. 165-66.

Jespersen, Otto. The Philosophy of Grammar. NY: Norton, 1965.

Kolln, Martha, Understanding English Grammar. Second Edition. NY: Macmillan, 1986.

Note: The ideas presented in this essay are further developed in my Teaching Grammar as a Liberating Art. (1994) Rose Parisella Productions, 30 Marvin Circle, Williamsport, PA 17701.