(Originally Posted Apr 11, 2016)
Syntax is, coldly defined, as the arrangement of words and phrases to create sentences. Syntax is also an entire branch of language study, focusing on the rules and structures that create well-formed sentences. For an academic, this is wildly interesting and provides a deep well for exploration and discussion.
For most people, such a discussion would be an effective anesthetic or lullaby, at best. But syntax is not simply a topic for stuffy intellectual types, because the arrangement of words and phrases has value beyond just the following (or failing) of rules. Syntax can reveal things to us without them ever consciously being stated. Good, effective syntax has a relationship with the reader that borders on telepathy; it tells you details that aren't said out loud, either because they do not need to be, or because they cannot be, properly expressed in bare words.
For instance, I'm presently reading a short story from Anthony Doerr's collection Memory Wall, entitled "The River Nemunas," and its use of syntax is a foundational tool in creating the character of Allison.
Allison is a girl of thirteen whose parents have both died of cancer, each within three months of the other. As a reader, this information does not come with any exposition about how this has affected Allison. We are left to infer her emotional state, even if we can safely assume the loss of her parents causes her some distress, even if she doesn't say so in as many words. In fact, the number of words she uses is our first clue as to how she is feeling.
The first three sentences of "The River Nemunas" take up only a single line of text, each one a mere four words: "My name is Allison. I'm fifteen years old. My parents are dead." These telegraphically short sentences are Allison's primary means of introducing her story and are a part of her identity throughout. They create a stuttered pace to the read, and often remove from the writing any sense of joy or flourish. Allison, in her telling of events and herself, is disinterested and emotionally distant. She is numb.
There are times, however, when Allison's prose opens up, expanding to make room for more emotion. After her parents die, Allison's only living relative is Grandpa Z, so she takes her dog Mishap to live with Grandpa Z in Lithuania, a European country bordering Russia. Here, on her first night in a narrow three-room house, Allison says a prayer.
Dear God, please watch over Mom in Heaven and please watch over Dad in Heaven and please watch over me in Lithuania. And please watch over Mishap, too. And Grandpa Z.
This prayer provides the clearest evidence we have that Allison's syntax is inextricably tied to her emotions. The first sentence of her prayer is a stringy one, rambling over multiple conjunctions ("...and...and...and..."). These conjunctions connect three otherwise short clauses together, and as a result connect the objects of those clauses too: her Mom, her Dad, and herself. That her family is connected syntactically when it is physically broken represents the strong emotional connection Allison still has for her parents; because of how strongly she feels for them, she dedicates a longer, meandering thought to them.
While Mishap does not share the same importance of her deceased parents, she loves the dog and gives it a sentence that is structured almost identically to the clauses that came before it. Additionally, it is longer than the fragment given to Grandpa Z at the end. He is nearly a stranger to him. He may be family by blood, but the brevity of her prayer (and sentence) for him reveal that she feels as disconnected from him as she does the rest of the world.
Although I have yet to finish the story, I have scanned it with an eye for the syntax which follows. What I see is a prose style that, over time, expands to allow more space for emotion, for joy. It appears that she may come to find a measure of contentment in Lithuania, as her sentences become longer and more complex in general. Those short sentences never go away, however. Not entirely. That piece of her that misses her lost family, that feels apart and numb to the world, that - I think - will stay with her.
But over time I believe there will be room in her heart, and in her prose, for hope.