Barbery

Barbery is essentially arguing that grammar “is a way to attain beauty,” and for the most part, this is true. The application of grammatical rules is really how one coherently conveys a message to their audience -- after all, grammar itself is what allows speakers to understand one another. The ability to “manipulate” these rules, so to speak, may be what Barbery subsequently means by “applying the rules of grammar skillfully” -- the application of different grammatical rules and processes can produce different effects. “Skillful” application is essentially the recognition of what applications may be appropriate for certain situations. For example, sentences in the passive voice may convey a different message than their active counterparts. …show more content…
This occurs due to the remerge of the subject’s DP, which would usually occur in the spec-VP position under the Fin head, into the specifier position of the FinP itself (this happens in order to check the uninterpretable feature on Fin). This movement can produce a relatively significant rhetorical effect: it can emphasize the “logical object,” or the constituent in the subject position that is actually interpreted as the object of the verb, much more heavily than an active construction could. In the aforementioned passive example, the reader tends to focus more heavily on Mary’s role as the entity being loved; in the active example, that focus seems to shift towards Eve’s agentive role as the one who loves