Among linguists who work on syntax--of any language--tree diagrams have been standard representations since the mid-60s. However, over the past 35 years, what the tree for a particular sentence looks like has changed considerable as knowledge about syntax has increased and as theories have changed. What this means is that there a lots of books on tree diagrams and very little agreement. Almost any college-level grammar text, with the exception of Mark Lester's, which makes extensive use of Reed-Kellogg diagrams like you learned, will use tree diagrams and show you how to draw them. The text I've used for several years now is Max Morenberg's Doing Grammar (2nd Ed.), and it does a nice job of presenting trees. However, other texts, like Richard Veit's Discovering English Grammar, also present trees well but draw different trees. In short, people will draw Reed-Kellogg diagrams in much more similar ways that they will draw trees. With all of that as caveat, it's worth adding the major difference between trees and RK diagrams. Trees are about structures and categories. RK diagrams are about function. The sentences Sylvia cleaned up the carpet. Sylvia cleaned the carpet up. will have the same diagram because the function of "up" is both is the same. Their trees will be different because the syntactic positions of "up" are different. Morenberg's book does a nice job of bringing together structural and functional information in a tree, so he succeeds in capturing some of both methods. Herb Stahlke >>> [log in to unmask] 01/11/01 05:45AM >>> I was taught diagramming in college--the honors program did no grammar instruction in high school; I believe the assumption was that we already knew it. I find diagramming an interesting method of allowing the logical sequential learner another means of understanding the structure of our language. You mention tree diagrams. I am intrigued. Are there books out there on these? What would you recommend? I tend to think the more tools in my belt, the more students (and different styles of learners) I can reach. Thanks, Mary Ann Yedinak To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/