In order to understand a sentence fully, one
must understand its parts and the way they
work. A complete sentence, in its most simple
form, is a substantive with a verb in agreement.
Additions to this sentence may include other
substantives and verbs, but most additions are
modifiers, either adjectival or adverbial. These
modifiers should enhance the substantive and
its verb, elevating their existence within the
sentence. However, modifiers may also detract
from the substantive and verb. This occurs
when the substantive and verb become lost
among the additions.
A simple, easily
understood complete sentence, i.e. a sentence
containing only a substantive with a verb in
agreement, becomes with the addition of too
many modifiers that are not really necessary a
foudryant expression that is difficult, although
not impossible to diagram for the purpose of
grasping the relationships between words that
are, in their present state, convoluded by the
addition of modifiers within and without
clauses, to decipher. In other words, too many
modifiers make a sentence difficult to
understand.
While the simple complete
sentence is concise by its very nature, a
concise sentence may contain much more than
a substantive with verb. A concise sentence
contains the essential and whatever else, if
anything, to elevate the essential. Modifiers are
not bad per se, but modifiers must remain just
that: modifiers. They must be chosen carefully
and remain secondary to the essential
(provided that their primacy is not the intent).
Modifiers and their use within a sentence are
distinguishing factors between carefully crafted
prose or poetry and misleading verbosity. The
beauty of the concise sentence is its ability to
express the most while using the least. The
same can be true for architecture.
For this
thesis I looked to the substantive for
establishing a connection between a project
and the existing architecture of its site.
[Vita modified March 5, 2012. GMc]
