and so on. The words ending in -ing are all what are termed present participles. The differences between the two verbal items in the following sentences:
underline that present participles function to create a sense of continuing, if suspended, action. In the poem they convey a feeling of things continuing endlessly or, at least, without any clear end. It may not be inappropriate, therefore, that the final line of the poem contains the group of words:
which, with an absence of punctuation, possibly reinforces the idea of an endlessly drifting journey without a conclusion.
Notice, too, how many film titles contain present participles: for example, Leaving Las Vegas, Boxing Helena, Being There, No Turning Back. There are many more similar titles to check out in a local video shop, but consider why such forms are so common.
PRONOUNS AND PATTERNS
Although we interpreted the previous text ‘Off Course’ as being about a space journey which involved the lives of astronauts, there are, in fact, no actual references in the poem to people. The nouns refer to actions which we take to involve humans but the poem does not contain lines such as
the floating song the growing beard the shining rendezvous the turning continents the crackling headphone the crawling deltas
the world turns the turning world
the floating song
His rough sleep His growing beard Your hot spacesuit Her cabin song Our floating lifeline.
Words such as ‘you’, ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘his’, ‘her’ are pronouns. The main personal pronouns are: I, you, he, she, it, we, they. They are the main means of identifying speakers, addressees and others. The main possessive pronouns are: my, your, her, his, their, our. They indicate ownership. (Other types and functions of pronouns are explored in Unit 4 pp. 187 ff.) One possible effect of the absence of pronouns from ‘Off Course’ is to make the poem a little impersonal and cold, almost as if we are hearing a list of facts.
Activity
Text: Milk message also presents a number of facts but does it in a different way. Find all the pronouns in this text and list them. Whom do they refer to? Why are so many pronouns used in the text?
Text: Milk message
Commentary
The strategy of the CWS Milk Group here is to address the customer directly and to show their sensitivity to their customers as individuals. In this message personal pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘we’ and, in particular, ‘you’ are extensively employed. A key sentence is:
Since this date we have held back on any increase to you, our valued doorstep customer.
The message manages to describe the sale of milk to customers as if it were a collaborative venture. The use of the plural pronouns ‘we’, ‘our’, ‘us’ underlines the sense of the CWS group, the individual milkman and the customer as a ‘team’, and this is further emphasised by the description of the delivery of milk as an essential social and community service. At the same time the message is still a subtly individualised message. The ‘letter’ is written as if it is from each individual milkman who uses the singular personal pronoun ‘I’ (complete with personal photograph) to personalise the relationship with ‘you’, the customer. It is an effective piece of writing and it is all the more effective for personalising a message which informs us that the price of milk is to go up. The resigned expression on the face of the milkman tells us that there is little anyone can do about this state of affairs but we can continue to look positive and good-humoured. Holding his milk crate like a trophy also establishes a clear pride in his job and in his relationship with his customers.
One other very obvious grammatical difference between the ‘Milk message’ and the poem ‘Off Course’ is that the message is written in complete sentences and makes use of much more familiar and conventional patterns of paragraphing and punctuation. The use of upper-case (capital) letters at the beginning and end of the message also emphasises the personal and individual nature of the relationship between the milkman and the customer.
Activity
Now read the ‘Milk message’ and see how many noun phrases you can find which have the same d m n pattern as those in ‘Off Course’. If they are the same, consider why they are the same and, if the patterns are different, consider how and why they are different. It may help to list all the nouns that you can find in the text and then all the modifiers which occur in front of these nouns. Here are two examples to start you off:
Here the nouns are Group and Board; the modifiers are CWS Milk and Milk Marketing.
Commentary
In ‘Off Course’ the noun phrases are written, as we have seen, in the same pattern of d (definite article), m (modifier) and n (noun); in the ‘Milk message’ text the pattern is more complex. Here are some examples:
the CWS Milk Group the Milk Marketing Board.
the CWS Milk Group the Milk Marketing Board our valued doorstep customer the Co-op home delivery service
These examples illustrate the much wider range of noun phrases which are possible in English, and they also illustrate that modifiers can occur after the main noun as well as in front of the main noun. The modifiers which occur before a main noun are called pre- modifiers, while the modifiers which occur after a main noun are called post-modifiers. In these examples ‘with children’ and ‘of essential food items’ are post-modifiers. On the surface they help to make the text a little more dense and complex to read than ‘Off Course’.
Compared with ‘Off Course’ the ‘Milk message’ also employs more premodifiers in front of the main noun. This feature allows description to be a little more detailed and precise. Several of these pre-modifiers are also themselves nouns; and we should note that the pre-modifying nouns cluster in phrases which describe organisations or which provide a more technical definition of actions or entities (for example, the Co-op home delivery service). Normally, the more nouns which are used in a pre-modifying position the more technical or specialised the reference will be. You can often identify writing in science and engineering by the amount and density of this kind of pre-modification. For example, here are some terms from a car maintenance manual:
Although the letter to customers from their milkman is designed to be a personal letter, it nonetheless suggests that it is from a company which is in some way also specialised and efficient.
a valuable social role
a very competitively priced range of essential food items households with children.
metal hub-bearing outer race low-friction disc brakes aluminium precision dial gauge.
Text: Reebok trainers
Extension
1 Text: Reebok trainers is an advertisement for training shoes. There are a number of interesting features of this text but your first task is to underline all the personal pronouns contained in it. How many pronouns are there? What kinds of pronouns are there? Are the pronouns singular or plural pronouns? What seems to be the purpose of the writer of the advertisement in using pronouns?
What is the shape of the advert? Why are capital letters in the centre and why does it seem as if the whole is like a wheel with spokes linking the centre and the
perimeter? How many of the words at the centre are pronouns? Why?
2 Your second task is to underline the noun phrases in the text. When you have done this, write a short paragraph in which you say what you think the main effect is of noun phrases such as:
Hexalite lightweight cushioning medially posted dual density midsole Graphlite arch.
Note: see satellite text: The Language of Advertising