Here at my office (different OS), I tried a few sentences and the diagrammer appears to have learned a lot in the last few years. Although some sentences give multiple diagrams (e.g., http://1aiway.com/nlp4net/services/enparser/default.aspx?text=On%20Halloween%20night%20the%20neighborhood%20children%20rang%20every%20doorbell%20on%20the%20block%20to%20fill%20their%20bags%20with%20goodies. ) the differences are less dramatic/more plausible.
A possible variation on the assignment Mark suggested could be to send students to the diagrammer with a sentence that produces multiple diagrams and ask them to comment on which, if any, of the diagrams are acceptable, why/why not, and maybe why might the site be producing multiple diagrams for that particular sentence in the first place. For example, some of the differences relate to whether a prepositional phrase is adverbial or adjectival. Students would need to know RK diagrams reasonably well in order to do that, however.
Beth
Dr. Beth Rapp Young
Associate Professor, English
[log in to unmask]
U of Central Florida, Orlando
"Reach for the Stars"
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Beth Young
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 2:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: NCTE-FYI
Mark, you're right, asking students to comment on incorrect diagrams could work very well.
The machine errors are not alternate but plausible interpretations of the sentences, at least not to any actual English speaker. They are just weird. Unfortunately, I can't give you examples because I don't have the old diagrams saved and the diagrammer doesn't work on my new Windows 8.1 OS. If you can get it to diagram for you, you'll see that for some sentences it produces multiple potential diagrams that you can cycle through. I have seen it give 10+ possibilities. It would be tough to come up with a sentence short enough for the software that has 10+ different plausible syntactic interpretations.
Beth
Dr. Beth Rapp Young
Associate Professor, English
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
University of Central Florida
"Reach for the Stars"
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of M C Johnstone [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 2:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: NCTE-FYI
Beth,
If many machine generated R-K diagrams are wrong, then perhaps an alternative approach would be to give students wrong ones from the site and ask them to explain or comment on the error.
Of course, you don't tell them what the error is, and as someone else notes below, there may be more than one way to skin an R-K cat.
Mark
On Wed, Aug 27, 2014, at 07:34 PM, Beth Young wrote:
I dunno, grading students on right/wrong for ANYTHING can be discouraging for the students.
I used to teach R-K diagramming in my grammar class, partly because some of my students (some future K12 teachers) would need to know them, partly because the textbook used them, partly because some students really liked them and seemed to learn from them. The assignments were for extra credit. One extra credit assignment asked students to create a new way to diagram that used the colors, fonts, etc. that we all have now in our word processors, which (when students put thought into it) was fun to see.
Now, there is a website that will make R-K diagrams for you. http://1aiway.com/nlp4net/services/enparser/ The diagrams are often wrong, but when the site went live, I found I was getting many more extra credit submissions to grade, and curiously many of them were exactly the same kind of weird wrong that the online diagrammer produced. That tipped the benefit ratio way too far into the negative, so I don't do this anymore. Some students ask about R-K diagrams and I am happy to teach them when asked, but that's it.
Beth
Dr. Beth Rapp Young
Associate Professor, English
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
University of Central Florida
"Reach for the Stars"
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Jean Waldman [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 11:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: NCTE-FYI
The trouble with articles like this is they never mention phrase structure trees. They talk as if there is only one way to make a geometric diagram of a sentence. It might be an enlightening exercise to have students invent new ways to show the relationships between the words in a sentence. Having them use Reed-Kellog or phrase structure diagrams and then grading them on right or wrong is discouraging for the students.
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 7:26 PM, Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
NCTE just posted this link on its Facebook page - watcha'll think?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/22/341898975/a-picture-of-language-the-fading-art-of-diagramming-sentences
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