Sentence arrangement
Encyclopedia
Sentence arrangement refers to the location of ideas and the placement of emphasis within a sentence
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...

. Based on these factors, a sentence may be classified as loose, balanced, periodic, or cumulative.

Examples

A loose sentence expresses the main thought near the beginning and adds explanatory material as needed.
  • We bashed the piñata
    Piñata
    A piñata is a papier-mâché or other type of container that is decorated, filled with toys and or candy and then broken as part of a ceremony or celebration. Piñatas are most commonly associated with Mexico, but its origins are considered to be in China...

     for 15 minutes without denting it
    , although we at least avoided denting one another's craniums and, with masks raised, finally pried the candy out with a screwdriver.


A cumulative sentence places the general idea in the main clause
Clause
In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...

 and gives it greater precision with modifying words
Grammatical modifier
In grammar, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure; the removal of the modifier typically doesn't affect the grammaticality of the sentence....

, phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....

s, or clauses placed before it, after it, or in the middle of it. In this example, the phrases eyes squinting, puffy, and always on alert look forward to the pronoun he in the main clause; the phrases after the word forest look back to the word week in the main clause.
  • Eyes squinting, puffy, always on alert, he showed the effects of a week in the forest, a brutal week, a week of staggering in circles driven by the baying of wolves.
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