Sentence Structure and Verb Usage in Nineteenth-Century Novels, Summaries of Logic

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Literary Lab

Pamphlet

Sarah Allison

Marissa Gemma

Ryan Heuser

Franco Moretti

Amir Tevel

Irena Yamboliev

Style at the Scale of the Sentence

June 2013

AB

Pamphlets of the Stanford Literary Lab

ISSN 2164-1757 (online version)

PC

PC

Goth_01_1_1786_Beckf_VathekTran

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Jaco_04_7_1792_Holcr_AnnaStIves Jaco_04_8_1792_Holcr_AnnaStIvesJaco_04_9_1792_Holcr_AnnaStIves Jaco_05_1_1794_Holcr_TheAdventuJaco_05_2_1794_Holcr_TheAdventuJaco_05_3_1794_Holcr_TheAdventuJaco_05_10_1794_Holcr_TheAdventu Jaco_05_4_1794_Holcr_TheAdventu

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Jaco_08_1_1799_HaysM_TheVictimo

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as

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but

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have

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said

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were

what

when

which

who

will

with

would

you

your

Figure 1.1: Most Frequent Word sca!erplot with titles (light grey) and component loadings (black). From Literary

Lab Pamphlet 1, “Quantitative Formalism: An Experiment”.

We will return at the end to the “not merely functional” nature of style. For now, let’s just

say that, since the anti-reductionist position was the more numerous one, we used it as

the basis for developing the next stage of the argument, by considering a series of lin-

guistic structures of increasing complexity to try and capture the moment at which style

became visible. The series went something like this: Gothic novels have many locative

prepositions; but a thousand occurrences of “from”, “on”, “in”, and “at” are not style in

any conceivable sense of the word. Jacobin novels have a lot of conditionals; a li!le bet-

ter, perhaps, but not much. Then came the formula Franco More!i had noticed in Gothic

titles, and analyzed a few years earlier in “Style, Inc.”: “the x of y”:The Castle of Otranto,

orThe Rock of Glotzden. The formula was a perfect expression of the Gothic obsession

with space; but, once more, functionality was not really style. The next layer was another

formula, that Marissa Gemma had identified in Poe, and discussed in her dissertation: “the

x of y of z”, she had called it—as inThe Fall of the House of Usher, or “the gray stones of the

home of his forefathers”. This authorial exaggeration of a generic trait, with its defiance of

any mere functionality, offered a first glimpse of what we were looking for; maybe it was

style, maybe it wasn’t, but we were finally ge!ing close. And with the next instance—the

opening words ofMiddlemarch: “Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to

be thrown into relief by poor dress”—we all agreed we had entered the territory of style

proper. As Sarah Allison had shown in her dissertation’s analysis of this type of sentence,

a whole series of connections and transformations coalesce around the relative pronoun

“which”: as the past tense of the main clause becomes the present of the dependent one,

narrative distance turns into engaged comment, and character description (“Miss Brooke

had beauty”), into a nuanced qualification of the type and meaning of that beauty.^1 One

reads the sentence, and immediately gets the sense of a work capable of modulating from

novel into essay, and from the relative simplicity of the story to the subtlety of reflection.

The sentence is certainly perfectly functional to the opening of a novel—but it also pos-

sesses many other layers of meaning, all closely interconnected. Now,this was style.

We had found a starting point. We would study not style as such, but styleat the scale of

the sentence: the lowest level, it seemed, at which style as a distinct phenomenon be-

came visible. Implicitly, we were defining style as a combination of smaller linguistic units,

which made it, in consequence, particularly sensitive to changes in scale—from words

to clauses to whole sentences. Yet we also hesitated, because the sentence wasn’t at all

an obvious choice for stylistic analysis; Auerbach inMimesis, or Wa! in his essay onThe

Ambassadors, had, for instance, operated at the quite different scale of theparagraph:

ten, twenty, thirty lines, that included a much greater variety of linguistic traits, and could

thus be seen (most clearly inMimesis) as a model and miniature of the work as a whole.

Sentences seemed much too short to play the same role. Perhaps they could play a differ-

ent one? Did something happen at the scale of the sentencethat could not happen at any

other scale?

2. Sentence Types: the Initial Choice [October 2011-January 2012]

We would be studying sentences, then. And, given that a long tradition of narrative

theory—from Benveniste’sEssays in General Linguistics to Barthes’Writing Degree Zero

and Weinrich’sTempus—had recognized a categorical difference between story and

discourse, we began by separating the sentences that belonged to the dialogue among

characters from those that belonged to the narrative system. We needed texts where

speech was marked with enough clarity and consistency for our tagger to recognize it,

so we turned to the Chadwyck-Healey nineteenth-century database (smaller than our Lab

corpus, but cleaner, with about 250 well-marked British novels), and separated the sen-

tences into three types: those containing dialogue, those containing a mixture of narrative

and dialogue, and those containing only narrative. Allison and More!i concentrated on

the “mixed sentences”, where the intersection of dialogue and narrative—which had not

been much studied by narrative theory—seemed to promise interesting stylistic effects;

but this line of inquiry quickly became so specific that we decided it would require a study

of its own. Meanwhile, Gemma, Heuser, Tevel, and Yamboliev chose to focus exclusively

on narrative sentences, and on a few well-defined combinations of clauses. Figure 2.

shows the one- and two-clause sentences that quickly emerged as the most prevalent in

the corpus.

1 A version of this argument is forthcoming inELH as “Discerning Syntax: George Eliot’s Relative Clauses”.

Initially, the group concentrated on three types above all others: IC-IC sentences, which

consisted of two independent clauses; IC-DC, where an independent clause was followed

by a dependent one; and DC-IC, where the dependent clause preceded the independent

one. Two-clause sequences established a relationship between propositions that—in line

with our initial plan—might allow us to see style emerging from their combination, while re-

maining small enough to capture the narrative or semantic logic contained therein. And at

this point, the turning point of the entire project occurred. Allison suggested that we start

with conjunctions, as they provided a grammatical condensation of a logico-semantic

relationship—adversative, causal, coordinating, correlative, defining, predicative, etc. 2 —

and were thus the perfect place to begin our investigation. By and large, we expected that

thedistribution of the logico-semantic relationship would be extremely variable—some

texts inclining towards the causal register, or the predicative, or the coordinating one—

while theorder of the clauses would o"en be completely unrelated to logical function; so

that, for example, a text with a preference for “narrative sequencing”^3 would be equally

likely to express such relations in IC-DC sentences as in DC-IC ones.^4 But the results of our

inquiry—summarized in Figure 2.2 —proved to be quite different from our expectations.

For us, the most striking aspect of this figure was the radical asymmetry between two

logico-semantic relationships, and two sentence-types: the “sequencing” relation, that

appeared in 51% of the DC-IC sentences, but only in 13% of the IC-DC ones, and the “de-

fining” relation, that appeared in 41% IC-DC, and a mere 5% of DC-IC. The asymmetry was

so marked that, at the meeting when it was first presented, it was received with a lot of am-

bivalence: though the IC-DC findings could be explained by grammatical necessity, what

about the DC-ICs? We had been looking for the emergence of style (“Miss Brooke had

that kind of beauty...”)—but the structure of DC-IC sentences seemed to alert the reader to

narrative developments instead. From the very first word, its inner form implied a prepara-

tion, then a pause—“When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed

of violence,”—and then, a"er the comma, the rapid completion of the mini-sequence

(“... my terrors reached their height”: Dickens). When, as in Figure 2.3 , we noticed that

88% of Radcliffe’s DC-IC sentences had a “sequencing” function, we felt we had found

2 Needless to say, grammatical nomenclature nowadays is highly variable: in the main, we have followed the cat-

egories of Rodney Huddleston and George K. Pullum,The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cam-

bridge U.P., 2002, pp. 1293-1321.

3 Our notion of a “sequencing” relation between clauses is based onThe Cambridge Grammar’s discussion of

“temporal sequence”, (Huddleston and Pullum 1300) which—as we aimed to capture the full spectrum of temporal

ordering conveyed by conjunctions we expanded to include both coordination and subordination. “Sequencing”

relations are for us those in which the conjunction creates any temporal order—linear, non-linear, and simultane-

ous. As such, sentences like “Before the shades of evening had closed around us, I had a dozen awakening le!ers

for my aunt, instead of a dozen awakening books” (Collins), and “While I was anticipating the terrors of a heroine, he

introduced me to his Cardinal” (Disraeli), are also tagged as “sequencing” sentences.

4 On the other hand, we didnot expect the order of clauses to be unrelated to function in the case of the “defining”

relation. Like the category of “sequencing”, we based our category of “defining” relations on grammatical termi-

nology: a defining sentence is one in which the relative clause— i.e., a dependent clause using “which”, “who”,

or “that”— defines or characterizes the other clause: “This was Mrs. Finn, the wife of Phineas Finn,who had been

one of the Duke’s colleagues when in office” (Trollope). Since it is nearly impossible to place a dependent defining

clause before the clause that it elaborates, it makes grammatical sense that we would find more defining sentences

in IC-DCs (like the Trollope example here). And indeed, our findings for the order of clauses among “defining” sen-

tences conformed neatly to the demands of grammatical correctness—and thus proved rather unproductive for

our literary analysis. This finding was also confirmed by our semantic analysis of IC-DC sentences, as we discuss

in section 4.

DCIC ICDC ICIC

% of Total val

Sequencing

Sequencing

Sequencing Predicative

Predicative

Paratactic

Elaboration

Defining

Defining

Coordinating

Conditional

Conditional Causal

Causal^ Causal

Adversative

Adversative

Figure 2.2: Distribution of the prominent clause relations across sentence type. Notice the almost perfectly

inverse relationship between the DC-IC, dominated by “sequencing” and “conditional” relationships, and the IC-DC,

almost entirely taken by “predicative” and “defining” ones.^5 The IC-IC, for its part, resembles neither of the other two

sentence types, and specializes in coordination and, to a lesser extent, parataxis.

a very significant metric of narrativity— especially when we compared these results with

our non-narrative control text, Darwin’sThe Origin of Species, in which such sentences

were nearly absent (2%). But this metric seemed to have li!le to do with the concept of

style. And when, a few weeks later, Amir Tevel found some unexpected narrative traits in

IC-DC sentences, the switch in focus from style to narrative seemed even more inevitable.

5 We used “defining” to categorize both restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses, since we found that distin-

guishing between them did not substantively add to our analysis. For the fine-grained distinctions between these

types of clauses, see Huddleston and Pullum, 1033-1064.

3. Towards a Typology of Narrative Sentences [February 2012]

While working on the structure of IC-DC sentences—which, as we have noted, generally

have much more to do with predication and definition than with sequencing—Tevel no-

ticed among predicative and defining sentences an embedded narrative configuration

that seemed typical of them. Here are a few examples:

3.a

Her extreme beauty so"ened the inquisitor who had spoken last. [P. B. Shelley]

But no ma!er; I will be the friend, the brother, the protector of the girl who has

thrown herself into my arms. [Dacre]

It was then offered to the Palmer, who, a"er a low obeisance, tasted a few drops.

[Sco!]

He u!ered an involuntary exclamation, and called to the driver, who brought

the horses to a stop with all speed. [Dickens]

Fanny called the post-boy to the window of the chaise, and gave him direc-

tions, at which he a li!le stared, but said nothing. [M. Shelley]

In looking at these sentences, Tevel noticed that the dependent clause did two things at

once: it introduced adifferent character from the subject of the main clause—the post-boy,

the driver, the inquisitor, the Palmer, the girl who had thrown herself—while also allowing

these newcomersa very limited role in the text: the post-boy stares but says nothing, the

driver stops the horses, the Palmer tastes a few drops. It’s an opening of the story to the

Many—to use Alex Woloch’s term for minor characters—but these Many get to do only a

Li!le. A li!le, in the sense that they complete an already-initiated sequence rather than

inaugurate an independent action. The syntax itself nudges writers in this direction: since

it’s hard to imagine a dependent clause that does something independent from the main

clause, these (half-)sentences slide almost “naturally” into a form ofnarrative a!enuation.

They narrate—but minor episodes only. Conan Doyle used the unconscious expecta-

tions arising from this grammatical fact to perfection when he placed clues in dependent

clauses, thus making them visible while suggesting to readers that nothing important was

being said.^6 In the following example, for instance, the smell of the cigar, which is the de-

cisive piece of information, appears only as the third link of a tight chain of subordinates,

and is further deflected in a non-narrative direction by the relative clause that follows:

That fatal night Dr Roylo! had gone to his room early, though we knew that he

had not retired to rest, for my sister was troubled by the smell of the strong In-

dian cigars which it was his custom to smoke. (The Adventure of the Speckled

Band)

This, then, was the characteristic narrative function of these IC-DC sentences. And when

we turned to DC-IC sentences, the mirror-image configuration emerged: here, the depen-

6 As always, Viktor Shklovsky understood it all a century ago: “[In the Holmes stories] instructions are given not

directly but in passing (i.e., in subordinate clauses, on which the storyteller does not dwell, but which are nonethe-

less of major importance) [...] the clue is intentionally placed in the oblique form of a subordinate clause”. Viktor

Shklovsky,Theory of Prose, 1929, Dalkey Press, Champaign, IL 1991, p. 106.

dent clause—which of course in this casepreceded the main clause rather than following

it—tended to report a muted preparatory event, while the main clause included the more

surprising one:

3.b

While she looked on him, his features changed and seemed convulsed in the

agonies of death. [Radcliffe]

When it was once fairly put before her, the effect was appalling. [Disraeli]

When she awoke, it was to the sound of guns. [Eliot]

In all these examples, the shi" in grammatical subject—she/his features; it/the effect; she/

it—coincided with an increase in narrative intensity: a semanticcrescendo—agonies,

appalling, explosions—that mirrored thediminuendo we had found in IC-DC. It was as if

these two types of sentences embodied the systole and diastole of the narrative system:

contraction-a!enuation in IC-DC, and expansion-intensification in DC-IC. As both func-

tions are indispensable to story-telling, we decided to try and find out whether expan-

sion and contraction alternated as regularly in novels as they do in living organisms, and

we began by looking for the diastolic-systolic pa!erns of the other three most frequent

types of narrative sentences (IC, IC-IC, IC-NFC). Here, the most interesting result was Yam-

boliev’s discovery that, in a (relatively small) group of IC-IC sentences, the relationship

between the two clauses was one of slight elaboration, or reiteration, or restatement: in

other words, fundamentally, ofstasis:

3.c

Perseverance alone was requisite, and I could persevere. [Holcro"]

She raised her head; she li"ed her hand and pointed steadily to the envelopes.

[Collins]

Oh she looked very pre!y, she looked very, very pre!y! [Dickens]

Will Ladislaw, meanwhile, was mortified, and knew the reason of it clearly

enough. [Eliot]

He showed no sign of displeasure; he hardly noticed. [Barry]

As stories have to intensify, a!enuate, and remain in some way static, Yamboliev’s finding

seemed intuitively right; and when a large group of IC-NFC, with gerunds in the dependent

clause, added the nuance of actions moving in parallel to each other, and overlapping in

the process, a genuine typology of narrative sentences seemed within reach—and with it,

the possibility of “sequencing” entire novels, charting the distribution of narrative inten-

sity throughout their length.

But there were two obstacles on the road to the narrative genomics we were beginning

to envision. First, in order to identify the signs of narrative intensity in the thousands of

sentences contained in a single novel, or the millions of a broader corpus, we had to find

a way to machine-gather the evidence. Our parser was however far from perfect even at

recognizing the five main sentence types; anything needing a finer grain—like expan-

sion, contraction, inertia and so on—would make it completely unreliable. And then, the

word

document

the

and

of

a

was

in.

he

his

to

her

had

with

it

she

at

that

i

but

not

for.

on

as

s

him

were

this

by

from

all

my

they

there

been

no

is mr

(DC)(IC)

(IC)(IC)

(IC)(DC)

(IC)

word

document

mr

an

one

have

would

could

their

which

more

be

so

or

very

up

them

then

now

into

than

little

out

me

did

time

upon

some

man

mrs

we

when

two

other

looked

came

lady before

(DC)(IC)

(IC)(IC)

(IC)(DC)

(IC)

Observed over Expected Values for the Top 100 Words in IC, ICDC, ICIC, DCIC

(continued)

A

A

Figure 4.1: Sentence types and their most distinctive words. Dark green indicates a strongly above-average fre-

quency, and dark red a strongly below-average one; grey indicates a frequency close to the average. Some results

literally leap to the eye: in 4.1, for instance, “which” is virtually absent from IC and IC-IC, very rare in DC-IC, and ex-

tremely frequent in IC-DC, where it introduces dependent relative clauses;^8 while “when” occurs 9.2 times (!) above

its expected rate in DC-IC. Same for the verbs of Figure 4.2, where “came” is particularly frequent in DC-IC, “looked”

and “took” in IC, “knew”, “felt”, and “thought” in IC-DC.

8 These findings for IC-DC sentences—unsurprising in themselves—help establish the accuracy of our semantic

results, as, grammatically, one would expect to see “which” in sentence types likely to have a defining or predicative

function, as in “Five or six rings and a bracelet had been taken also from Lizzie’s dressing-case, which she had le$

open” (Trollope).

word

was

had

were

been

have

be

is

did

came

went

made

looked

are

took

knew

said

found

left

heard

has

saw

turned

felt

passed

thought

done

stood

do

gave

sat

became

put

entered seemed

(DC)(IC)

(IC)(IC)

(IC)(DC)

(IC)

document

Observed over Expected Values for the Top 100 Verbs in IC, ICDC, ICIC, DCIC

Figure 4.2: Sentence types and their most distinctive verbs. See Figure 4.1 for explanation.

Now, this was clearly a good way to recognize the role of individual words in different

sentence types; fortuitously, small semantic clusters also emerged—like the “knew-felt-

thought” group in IC-DC, which suggested a focus on knowledge and perception. But the

approach remained fundamentally atomistic: analysis could only proceed one word at a

time. By contrast, principal component analysis—which we used in “Quantitative Formal-

ism”—offered a synthetic view of the entire semantic distribution of the four sentence

types with a single image ( Figures 4.3 and 4.4 ):

fell

said

shook

felt

turned

spoke

having

walked put

found

caught

arrived

opened

be

drew think

died

struck

left

seemed

gone

looked

started

closed

carried

set

received held

have

done

had

took

thought

followed

became

know

been

read

began

knew told heard

reached

stood

met

returned

brought given

came

become

grew

entered

placed

went

see

stopped

lived

do

seen

asked

say got

called

make

known

ran

remained

led

gave

rose

DCIC

IC

ICDC

ICIC

ï







ï   &RPS

&RPS

Total Number of Occurences a a a

ï ï ïPRUH

Max Observed/Expected a a

 

Figure 4.4: Sentence types and their semantic space (verbs)

Looking at the semantic differentiation of Figures 4.3 and 4.4 , the differences between the

four sentence types—or three, considering that IC and IC-IC occupied the same semantic

space—were acquiring more definite contours. In several cases, though, the results were

somewhat puzzling: finding “home”, “door”, and “change” as very typical of DC-IC on the

right side of the chart, for instance, one couldn’t help but wonder what on earth the first

two terms had to do with the third. Then, we realized that we could push the analysis a

step further: eliminate IC and IC-IC, for instance, and use principal component analysis to

differentiate, not only between the varioussentence types, but between theirclauses as

well. If semantic differences emergedamong sentences, perhaps they would also emerge

within them: between the dependent and independent clause of DC-IC, for instance; or

between the independent clause of DC-IC, and that of IC-DC. And indeed, as Figure 4.

shows, a semantic separation occurred at this lower scale as well: the odd trio of “home”,

boys

misfortune fortune

manner

hand

thing

voice

letters

carlyle

reply

taste

noise passage

household

tender

anxiety

wonder

death

north

wood

scene

pen

lord

music

surprise son

anne

widow

spot

elizabeth

instant

place

margaret

sky

consequence

questions

countess

direction

point

state

philip

captain

others

esteem

fancy

fashion

sign

truth

month

sound slope

jack

moment

points

explanation

happiness

end

trouble

boat

study

imagination

whole

difficulty

body

spirit

reflection

lily

hero

weakness

kind

hearts

army

room

hearing

floor

couragespeech

regard bag

felix

brother

archdeacon

bedroom

wind

visit

harry

recollection

love

arms

success

wallace

uncle

nurse

legs

hat

squire

scenes

violence

notice

difficulties

business carriage

trees

anguish

view

society

mark melmotte

child

river top church

chair

book

madame

palace

paper duty

pride

minds

boy

school

doors

cause

firmin

days

journey

master

abode

doubt

conversation

afternoon

frame

thoughts

resolution

company

look

circumstances

name

fanny wall

rain

chamber

bell

arthur

midst

monk

grief

marian instances

town

apartment

movement

opinion

things

mile

turn

will

vessel

enemy

grass

places

england

steps

energy

aspect

knowledge

kindness

hour

winterfriend

faces

idea

address

forms

relation

pounds

living

thorne

bosom

mouth

silverbridge

visitors front

plan

florence

yards

gentlemen

disappointment

request

period

walk

suspicion

future

observation

arrival

fawn

times

influence pleasure chapter

returndeparture

object

secret

anger week

heart

looks

strain

appearance

satisfaction

grace

sympathy

conditionnumbers

smile

house

dinner

step

quarter

head

tone

glanville

tears

drawing.room

molly

roof

property

children

battle

order

change

year

darkness

sister

lover

round

rest

hotel

earl ideas

prince

silver

st

importance

power

youth

mother

path

story

one

confidence

people

intimacy

anything

impression

while.

features

rate

minister

stairs

memory

helen

shoulder

soul

pity

woman

value

age

water

reason

virtue

possession

conduct

feelings

form

burst hope

evening sea

delight

pain

garden

village

arm

queen

disposition

court

barchester

de

necessity

building

nature

distance

gate

mary

cottage

health

fingers

london

street

right

prime

party

persons

finn

honor

storm

field

none

course

edward

ground

entrance occasion

strength

john

servants doctor

grave

morning

person

matter

sounds

baron

feet daughters

result supper

reader

night

events

cousin

daughter

gratitude

coach

emotions

city

beauty

road

thought

dr

inn

osborne

sorrow

servant

sense

powers

mystery

crawley

women

favor

park

lips

time

affection

eye

consciousness

breast

noon

interview

deal

life

cheek

solitude

service

hill

stranger

miles

heaven aunt

day

money

position

indifference

lizzie

subject

country

temper

land

william

family

father

god

something

hours

major

expression

indignation

julia

colonel

norman

henry

train

prospect

duchess

faith

accident

loss

face

passion

law

voices

situation

match

purpose

home

sort

coningsby

hers

tenderness

jealousy

friends

france

fever

iron

catherine breakfast

minutes

office

laura

affairs war

chief

effect minute

sisters

candle

books

marriage

hall

frank history

english degree

summer

dignity

friendship

horse

seat fault interest

window

need peace

brow

moments

air

witness

cynthia

girl

back

library humanity

breath

feeling

charles

hold

joy

color tree part

chance

comfort

george

fire

parlor

shop

absence

news

admiration

case

space

guests

laugh

rock

door

pair

halfguest

corner

vincent

sedley

glance

fear

meeting

husband

question

horror

pocket

fact

lovers

silence

gentleman

hair

birth

rose

box

allan

act

shadow

foot

dress

men

motives

existence

lines

use

months

richard

years

general

threshold

piece

force streets misery

account

table

earth

despair

triumph

james

sight

ladies

sun

mood

horses

fate

sensation

jane castle

robert

character difference

action

crowdlucy

girls

figure manners

nothing

creature

humor

experience

side

bishop

light

DCIC_IC

DCIC_DC

ICDC_DC

ICDC_IC

ï





ï   &RPS

&RPS

Max Observed/Expected a a

a

  

Total Number of Occurences a a

ï ï

Figure 4.5: Two-clause sentences and their semantic spaces

“door”, and “change”, for instance—whose coexistence near the DC-IC vector of Figure

4.3 had so puzzled us—disaggregated into two very different semantic fields: “home” and

“door” [plus “drawing-room”, “hall”, “church”, “gate”, “carriage”, “road” and other spatial

terms] turned out to be typical of the dependent clause in the upper right quadrant of the

chart, whereas “change” [plus “ma!er”, “feelings”, “indignation”, “despair”, “admiration”,

“tears”] all clustered around the independent one, in the upper le" quadrant. And the more

one looked, the clearer the semantic distance between the dependent and independent

clause of DC-IC became.^9 A correlation between grammar and semantics was thus begin-

ning to emerge. Not anecessary correlation: rather a “line of least resistance”, as Jakobson

had put it, in linking metaphors to poetry, and metonymies to prose; a “preference”, more

9 IC-DC sentences behaved somewhat differently: the independent clause possessed its own specific semantic

pole (“idea”, “reason”, “observation”, “imagination”, “hate”), but the vector of the dependent clause was far less

specified than the other three, as shown by its greater proximity to the center of the diagram. Given that these de-

pendent clauses are o$en relative ones, which must be free to move in multiple semantic directions, their not being

commi!ed to any specific semantic domain seemed intuitively appropriate.

When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a stamp

upon the ground. [Dickens]

When Esther looked at him she relented, and felt ashamed of her gratuitous

impatience. [Eliot]

In case a"er case, the semantic center of gravity of the independent clause had much

more to do withemotions (sorrow, gratitude, shame, anger...) than with guns or throes of

death. When a narrative intensification occurred, in other words, feelings ma!ered much

more than actions or events—or perhaps, more precisely, emotional intensitywas the

event. It was a second surprise. And a third quickly followed, when we shi"ed our a!ention

from the two clauses taken separately, to their combination. Since the semantic centers of

gravity of the two clauses were so completely different—spatial movement in the depen-

dent clause, and the expression of emotions in the independent one—it made sense that,

in general, one of them should occur while the other did not. But there were also quite a

few cases in which both semantic clusters were simultaneously activated:

5.c

When Peter perceived the village, he burst into a shout of joy. [Radcliffe]

When he came up to Butler again, he found him with his eyes fixed on the

entrance of the Tolbooth, and apparently in deep thought. [Sco!]

When she had got behind the curtain, she jumped on her father’s neck, and

burst into tears. [Disraeli]

When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of violence,

my terrors reached their height. [Dickens]

When she had once got to the seat she broke out with suppressed passion of

grief. [Gaskell]

When she reached home she found Mrs Pe!ifer there, anxious for her return.

[Eliot]

We read these sentences with a mix of perplexity and disappointment: they were so—

clumsy. Perhaps, inevitably so: space and emotions—which express, respectively, the

power of the “milieu”, and the melodramatic undercurrent of the age—are such heteroge-

neous entities that combining them in the same short sentence may be simply impossible.

And yet, every now and then, something seemed to happen:

5.d

When Deronda met Gwendolen and Grandcourt on the staircase, his mind

was seriously preoccupied. [Eliot]

But when he came in, she started up. [Gaskell]

Yet when he arrived at Stone Court he could not see the change in Raffles with-

out a shock. [Eliot]

When their hands fell again, their eyes were bright with tears. [Eliot]

These are much more evocative sentences. Instead of being activated in a mechanically

uninspired way, the relationship between space and emotions becomes sharp and dy-

namic: the “realism” of se!ing, and the “melodrama” of feeling inter-animating each other

with an almost Balzacian energy. It was an interesting find, this meeting-place between

the two main axes of the nineteenth-century imagination. But, once again, it wasn’t really

what we had been looking for. The strength and elegance of these sentences seemed

to exceed the semantic peculiarities we had meant to study. Would we have to change

direction one more time?

6. Verbs and Genres [May 2012]

Slightly. Now that we had quantified so many sentence-level features—number and types

of clauses, sentence length, logical relations—we decided to make an explicit connection

with the research conducted two years earlier in “Quantitative Formalism”, where we had

shown that the usage of the most frequent words (MFW) in English (like “the” and “of”) can

accurately distinguish genres. Could sentence-level choices also distinguish genres? In

other words, do genres have sentence styles? To answer this question, we tested which of

our quantified sentence features (such as length, clause use and number, verb tense, and

mood) could be used to meaningfully separate texts by genre. Among these features, it

turned out that verb tense and mood were the most successful at creating generic distinc-

tions. Figures 6.1 and 6.2 show a couple of PCA charts from this phase of our research,

involving theBildungsroman, the Gothic, and the Jacobin novel.