Essential Information

Sentences are wonderfully flexible things. Consider this one by James Surowiecki:

That prompted the Harvard economist Jeff Frankel, a member of the committee that officially declares when recessions begin and end, to declare the downturn over.

As I pointed out in my last post, it contains enough information for three sentences:

Jeff Frankel has declared the downturn over. Jeff Frankel is an economist at Harvard. Jeff Frankel is a member of the committee that officially declares when recessions begin and end.

But while the subject of these three sentences is Jeff Frankel, he is merely the object of Surowiecki's sentence. Surowiecki is not really writing about Frankel, he is writing about the economy. The pronoun "that" refers to the previous sentence; in fact, it takes the place of a much longer subject, which could be filled in without any grammatical errors.

Three straight quarters of growth and the creation of more than a hundred and fifty thousand jobs prompted the Harvard economist Jeff Frankel, a member of the committee that officially declares when recessions begin and end, to declare the downturn over.

That is, the economy is doing something to Frankel (namely, prompting him to declare); Frankel is not doing something to the downturn (namely, declaring it to be over).

You might also be interested to know why there is a comma after "Frankel" but not after "economist". Consider the difference between these two sentences:

That prompted the Harvard economist Jeff Frankel, a member of the committee that officially declares when recessions begin and end, to declare the downturn over.

That prompted the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, who holds a PhD in economics from MIT, to declare the downturn over.

There are several Harvard economists but there is only one chairman of the Fed. The words "Harvard economist" do not adequately identify the person speaking, while the words "the Chairman of the Federal Reserve" do refer to a single person. The clause between commas is a kind of parenthetical insertion of perhaps useful but inessential information. We can see the difference by removing the names of the two people:

That prompted the Harvard economist, a member of the committee that officially declares when recessions begin and end, to declare the downturn over.

That prompted the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, who holds a PhD in economics from MIT, to declare the downturn over.

Notice that this "anonymizes" Jeff Frankel but not really Ben Bernanke (we all know who the Chairman of the Fed is). The "the" in the first sentence gives the erroneous impression, however, that there is only one Harvard economist in the world (like it's an official position, like chief economist at the IMF.) It should be written:

That prompted a Harvard economist who is also a member of the committee that officially declares when recessions begin and end to declare the downturn over.

Notice that all the commas now disappear. Why is that? Well, without the proper name (or the unique position) to identify the speaker, the descriptive language becomes more essential to the meaning of the sentence. Maybe this sentence will help you see why:

That prompted Jeff to declare the downturn over.

Who is Jeff to make this declaration? For those who recognize the name, it might be enough to identify him as Jeff Frankel. But readers of The New Yorker might easily be hearing that name for the first time when they read the column. By contrast, you can imagine a conversation in a pub where "Did you hear Jeff has declared the downturn over?" makes perfect sense. Context does much to determine what is essential and what is not.

More on Friday.