Participants, processes and circumstances – 181
r non-human participants on which the action is performed,
that is the documents unearthed;
r both human (the people) and non-human (the events)
participants which constitute the subject matter of the
documents;
r the reasons given by historians to justify their explanations;
r the reasons given by historical figures for the events they
took part in.
Here are a few attempts to get into the writer’s mind and work out
what she was trying to say:
Historians seek better explanations of events by unearthing documents
which provide new evidence about the reasons historical figures gave for
their actions.
Historians use documentary evidence the better to justify their
explanations of historical events.
Documents contain evidence of the reasons for events which historians
need when searching for better historical explanations.
There are other possibilities. Notice, first, that they mean different
things. Hence, if you suspect that you have written a sentence which
seems to have confused a number of different participants and processes, you must do your best to work out which of the various
meanings you really intend. Your answer will depend largely on the
context in which the sentence arises – what you have already written
so far. In our example, the writer should probably have looked back
through her paragraph to decide – in the first instance – whether
she was writing about (human) historians, about (inanimate) documents or, indeed, about the evidence contained in the documents.
Once the topic or theme of the passage of writing is identified from
options such as these, it may be made the nominal referring expression in the main clause of the sentence, and the rest of the options in
r non-human participants on which the action is performed,
that is the documents unearthed;
r both human (the people) and non-human (the events)
participants which constitute the subject matter of the
documents;
r the reasons given by historians to justify their explanations;
r the reasons given by historical figures for the events they
took part in.
Here are a few attempts to get into the writer’s mind and work out
what she was trying to say:
Historians seek better explanations of events by unearthing documents
which provide new evidence about the reasons historical figures gave for
their actions.
Historians use documentary evidence the better to justify their
explanations of historical events.
Documents contain evidence of the reasons for events which historians
need when searching for better historical explanations.
There are other possibilities. Notice, first, that they mean different
things. Hence, if you suspect that you have written a sentence which
seems to have confused a number of different participants and processes, you must do your best to work out which of the various
meanings you really intend. Your answer will depend largely on the
context in which the sentence arises – what you have already written
so far. In our example, the writer should probably have looked back
through her paragraph to decide – in the first instance – whether
she was writing about (human) historians, about (inanimate) documents or, indeed, about the evidence contained in the documents.
Once the topic or theme of the passage of writing is identified from
options such as these, it may be made the nominal referring expression in the main clause of the sentence, and the rest of the options in