Re: Please analyse this - from John Curran
John,

The only R&K problem I see is the "perhaps" that modifies the final adverbial prepositional phrase.  When a structure modifies the sentence as a whole, we put it on a separate line. But in this case it modifies a whole phrase that's within the sentence--not the sentence as a whole. I guess I'd attach it to "with" in the same way that I'd attach "extremely" to "wealthy"--but it wouldn't really be accurate.

R&K diagrams aren't perfect. But they do a good job of showing the structural relationships of sentence parts, no matter where in the sentence they appear, distinguishing form and function.

Other than that "with" problem, John, you can do it, I'll betcha!
 
Martha


Following is an article from yesterday's "The Japan Times". I gave it to a couple of my adult classes here in Tokyo for discussion; for my students it perhaps was a long rather difficult sentence - but interesting from the current political position:
 
     "Amid dismal approval ratings, Prime Minister Taro Aso is trying hard these days to shed his public image as an aloof, rich politician from an extremely wealthy family, perhaps with an eye toward appealing to voters when the time comes to call an election".
 
I try to discuss parts of interesting newspaper articles and I encourage the students to finish the rest of the article in their spare time. Unfortunately most Japanese students read with a moving finger and pursed lips and my objective is to try to encourage them to recognize the 'chunks' of language from a mainly functional perspective. Chunks of language in the form of noun groups (including their adjectivals), adverbials (Circumstances in Systemic Functional Linguistic jargon) and etc. This is how I went about analyzing the newspaper text:
 
 
    Amid dismal approval ratings,
    prepositional phrase, Circumstance - adverbial (how?),
 
    Prime Minister Taro Aso
    Noun group, subject, Participant (in Systemic Functional language)
 
    is trying
    predicate verb, present continuous verb, action Process (in Systemic Functional language)
 
    hard these days
    adverbials,(Circumstances)
 
    [[to shed his public image as an aloof, rich politician from an extremely wealthy family]]
    Complement (is trying what?)   embedded clause functioning as a Participant in Systemic Functional language.
 
    perhaps with an eye toward appealing to voters when the time comes to call an election
    adverbial - Circumstance modifying the previous clause.
 
 
I read aloud with the students and ask them relevant wh? questions to elicit the 'chunks' of language. Comments please on this?  Has anybody the ability to show this in Kellog Reed diagram form in the forum?
I like to see it diagrammed!
 
 John
   
 
  
 
 
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