语言与文风2017nautil.us编辑精选
英语句子的兴衰
The Rise and Fall of the English Sentence
导读
这篇讨论英语句子结构变迁的文章，引发评论者围绕“复杂长句是否只属于书面语”、不同文化对长句的评价，以及语言兴衰的因果关系展开争论。写作者可借它反思句子长短、口语与书面语的差异，以及论证时引用证据的重要性。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
口语里的复杂表达常靠停顿、节奏和手势支撑，写成文字时要用标点和结构补偿，不能把口语的长串句直接照搬。
- 02
长句本身不是高级写作的标志；不同语言文化对“好句子”的标准不同，写作要看读者和语境。
- 03
讨论语言或文体演变时，别把相关当因果；概括性论断最好有例子或引文支撑。
- 04
英语能靠动词化、临时造词来扩展表达，但正式写作仍要控制可读性。
HN 评论精选
作者对“复杂句不出现在口语中”的断言缺乏证据，口语其实能借节奏、停顿和手势容纳复杂表达。
这是一篇引人入胜的文章，但充满诸如“像《独立宣言》开篇那样的句子根本不会出现在对话中”这样没有任何引用或论证的说法。作者似乎认为复杂、多重嵌套、复合或递归的陈述不会在英语口语中出现——当然必须承认自《独立宣言》写成以来语言已有所变化——然而我确知，以我啰嗦的习惯，我本人就说过让《独立宣言》开篇显得相当简洁的句子。口语不必担心标点、拼写，可以随意折腾语法结构。说话时你能蒙混过关的东西很多：节奏、停顿以及印刷文本中没有的各种技巧；面部和其他手势；口音和其他怪癖。尽管如此，有些书面散文或文件似乎超越了被钉在纸上的限制，获得自己的生命。比如莎士比亚（可能是他众多拼写之一）按一些人的说法就很会写。
gerdesj查看英文原文
A fascinating read but full of statements (without any citation or justification) such as: "sentences like the opening line of the Declaration of Independence simply do not occur in conversation". Here the author seems to state that complex, multi-nested, compound or recursive statements do not arise in spoken English - obviously we must allow that the language has changed somewhat since the DoI was written - however, I know - for a fact - that I have personally uttered sentences that make the DoI's opening statement look quite concise, given my habit towards verbosity ... etc etc ad nauseam. I apologise to anyone trying to parse the above paragraph. Spoken language does not have to worry about punctuation, spelling and can mess around with grammatical constructs. You can get away with a lot when speaking. You can use rhythm, pauses and all sorts of other tricks that are unavailable in print. You can also use facial and other gestures as well. You can fiddle with accents and other quirks as well. That said, some written prose/documents seem to somehow transcend the limits of being pinned down on a page and take a life of their own. For example, Mr Shaksper (probably one of his famous variety of spelings) was quite handy with a pen according to a few people.
长句是否“好”取决于文化规范；写作标准并非普世，读者负担的归属也不同。
我在巴西教了好几年英语作为外语，中级水平学生开始写论文。到了高级水平，我会教连写句为什么不好，全班总是非常困惑。最后我问一位巴西老师，为什么连写句对我的学生这么难理解。他解释说，在巴西，长而复杂、串在一起的句子被认为是好文章——把它们组织起来越费劲，越显得作者聪明，读起来更费劲是读者的问题，不是作者的问题！简单、易读的句子是没受过教育的作者的标志。所以如果我交的论文句子结构像《独立宣言》开头，在美国大概会被扣分，但在巴西却是好文章。
crazygringo查看英文原文
I taught English as a foreign language in Brazil for several years, and at the intermediate level students would begin writing essays. At the advanced level, I would teach about run-on sentences and how they're bad, and the class would always become tremendously confused. Finally I talked to one of the Brazilian teachers, asking why run-on sentences were such a difficult concept for my students to get. He explained that in Brazil, long, complex, strung-together sentences are considered good writing -- that the more work they are to put together, the smarter they show the writer is, and the fact that they take more work to read is the reader's problem, not the writer's! Simple, easily digestible sentences are the mark of an uneducated writer. So if I ever turned in a paper with sentence structure like the introduction to the Declaration, I'd probably have points taken off here in the US, yet it would be fine writing in Brazil...
语言兴衰多由文化、军事和贸易等外部力量推动，作者把语言特性当原因属于倒果为因，且历史例证跨了不相干的语系。
她似乎把因果关系颠倒了：把某些语言说成神秘或通俗，并把这些语言相对的成功归因于那些所谓特性。我认为语言往往随着使用它的文化起落；如果某种语言征服了大片领土或做了大量贸易，它就会更流行。流行语言会有人研究、编写语法和词典，使它更易学。英语是世界上最不规则的语言之一，有很多她会归为“神秘”的特性，但这显然没怎么影响它的成功。事实证明，有庞大军队比有易学的语言更重要。她还一度从赫梯语跳到阿卡德语来展示从句的发展，可这些语言根本不相干——赫梯语属印欧语系，阿卡德语属闪米特语系。然后她又直接跳到芬兰语，那又是另一个不相干的语系。
empath75查看英文原文
She seems to reverse cause an effect by talking about certain languages as being somehow esoteric or exoteric, and blaming the relative ‘success’ of those languages on those supposed properties. I think languages tend to go along for the ride with whatever culture happens to speak them, and that if they managed to conquer a lot of territory or do a lot of trading, the language would become more popular. And popular languages have people that study them and write grammars and dictionaries and make the language more accessible. English is one of the most irregular languages in the world and has a lot of properties that she would classify as esoteric, and that obviously hasn’t had much impact on its success. Turns out that having a massive army is more important than having an easily learned language. She also at one point jumps from Hittite to Akkadian to demonstrate the development of subordinate clauses, but the languages aren’t related at all — Hittite is Indo-European and Akkadian is Semitic. Then she jumps right to Finnish, which is from yet another unrelated family of languages.
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