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
> >
> > *
> >
> >
> > ----------
> > 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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