Dawn,
The most comprehensive work I know of on the history of diagramming is an unpublished dissertation by Richard Brittain, A Ciritcal History of Systems of Sentence Diagramming in English (University of Texas, 1973).
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Dawn Burnette
Sent: Thu 2/12/2004 2:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: diagramming question
I would love to have more information about the history of diagramming. Can you provide more information or direct me to a good source?
:) Dawn
"Stahlke, Herbert F.W." wrote:
Martha,This discussion raises an interesting question about sentence diagramming, a phrase I'll use instead of RK diagrams. You have proposed a couple of revisions to RK that seem to have taken hold. They're sensible revisions, although I'm not terribly taken with your Pattern I (NP be Adv/TP). However, most people who know anything at all about diagramming know nothing at all about its originators or its development from a three-quarter century diagramming movement in 19th c. US. Rather, diagramming is one of those things that exists in our culture. It's lore rather than doctrine, except for those few of us who might refer to your or Mark Lester's texts or back to R&K. That means that it exists in a variety of forms, none of which has broad authority but each of which seems authoritative to its users. For many teachers who use it, I am sure, there is no authoritative source beyond their immediate textbook series or their preparation in language arts. So how does the system change? How do better analyses get represented, particularly when they require some apparatus that is not generally a part of RK diagramming? Do we, perhaps, have an opportunity, perhaps as a part of the NPG program, to revise sentence diagramming in ways that better capture certain formal and functional distinctions, that are more explicit about their representation or non-representation of word order variants, and that at the same time keep to the general lore of diagramming? It strikes me that if we take something that is already a strongly valued, both positively and negatively, and improve it so that it is still identifiably the same artifact, the same lore, then we have a useful and value entry point into the public notion of grammar.Herb
I think there's a difference between "We found/sent the children upstairs," where "upstairs" is a place--and answers the adverbial question of "where"--and such structures as "We found the man dead," where "dead" describes "man." They are not "upstairs children"; the man, however, is a "dead man." Your prepositional phrase as subject is a neat example, Herb. Another is "Over the fence is out of bounds," where both subject and subject complement are prep phrases in form, both of which are nominals--names of places. And certainly adjectival prepositional phrases can serve as sub. comps, as in "The teacher was in a bad mood"--which means that prep phrases can also serve as object complements: "We found the teacher in a bad mood." My response to the original question, regarding "We were still some distance away": I call that a Pattern I sentence: be followed by an adverbial of time, just like "The children are upstairs." I diagram those adverbials as modifiers of the verb, shown beneath and attached to the verb, rather than on the line as subject complements. I reserve the SC space for nominals and adjectivals that rename or describe the subject. While adverbials do function to "complete" the verb--and in that sense are indeed "complements"--I think it's very valuable for students to see the distinction between adverbials and subject complements. I think of Pattern I (NP be ADV/TP) [that's adverbial of time or place] as the "intransitive" be pattern, in contrast to the "linking" be patterns, those with ADJ or NP subject complements. I should also mention how valuable I believe sentence patterns are in helping students organize all the details of sentence structure. I consider the patterns and their diagrams the closet organizers for learning form and function. Martha
Herb:
You've got a strong point, and in making it you bring up interesting considerations about object complements. I suppose what you say about "We found/sent the children upstairs" -- that "upstairs" is an object complement -- applies too to the prepositional phrase in something like "The rescuers found the hikers in a state of dehydration" (dehydrated). And I think R-K did allow for diagramming prepositional phrases on the subject-verb line, as when a prepositional phrase functions as subject ("After lunch is my sleepy time"), so why not as object complement. . . or subject complement?
MK
----------
From: Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Reply To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 4:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: diagramming question
Without getting into the nature of "be", which I don't think is the problem anyway, I'm uncomfortable with this analysis. Would you--and Martha--do the same thing with "upstairs" in "We found/sent the children upstairs", where it is clearly an object complement? SC and OC are essentially the same thing, the latter occurring with a transitive verb. Why treat them differently because the major category type (NP vs. AdvP) is different? They are different structures, but functionally they are the same thing, and that's what RK is about, function, more than structure.
Herb
Herb:
(Slavishly) following Martha, I would call "away" a required adverb of time and place (ADV/TP) in her Pattern 1 sentence (NP be ADV/TP) and put it under the verb were in the diagram -- just as Martha diagrams "The students are upstairs" with "upstairs" under are. I'll leave it to advanced theorists to explain how this "be" differs from a linking "be."
Mike
*
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From: Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Reply To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 12:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: diagramming question
Michael,
I'm getting back into RK diagrams in order to use them this summer with an undergrad class. Leaving the "when" out, since we don't have a main clause, I'd do the rest of the clause like this. Email doesn't let me underline or put words on a diagonal.
we | were \ away
\ \
still distance
\
some
"some distance away" is an adverb phrase serving as subject complement. "still" modifies "were", and I agree with you on "some" and "distance".
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Kischner, Michael
Sent: Tue 2/10/2004 3:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: diagramming question
It seems to me that away modifies were; distance modifies away; and some modifies distance.
----------
From: Dawn Burnette
Reply To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 6:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: diagramming question
A teacher in my department came to me this morning for help diagramming this clause from a Fitzgerald sentence: when we were still some distance away. What should she do with distance?
Dawn
Fay Sweney wrote:
Whoops! Looks like a draft email was accidentally sent. English teachers in my school district are currently evaluating curriculum. One step is to identify the complexity of what we expect kids to learn. We are in disagreement about this. Using Bloom's taxonomy, how would you classify the complexity of questions like those below-- Comprehension? Application? Analysis? And why? 1. Is the underlined word in the following sentence a preposition? The dog ran across the street. 2. Which of the following sentences contains a prepositional phrase? a. The cowboys rode their horses. b. The cowboys gave the horses a drink. c. The cowboys rode their horses into the sunset. My book was found under a fluffy pillow.3. The word pillow functions as a. an adjective b. a noun c. a preposition d. a pronoun 4. What is the structure of this sentence? a. simple b. compound c. complex Fay Sweney
Lake City High School
6101 N. Ramsey Rd.
Coeur d'Alene, ID 83815
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