Certainly there are some problems with traditional diagramming, Bob.  But I
have no problem with the statement that the diagrams "unambiguously
symbolize ALMOST ALL the relationships found among words in English
sentences."  (And I certainly don't call this statement categorical, as you
do!)

The two sentences that you cite are certainly among the problem sentences,
and, in fact, they are among those that I point out in my book as problems.
(I feel somewhat defensive about traditional diagramming because I was
more or less responsible for bringing it back, so to speak, for teacher
training with the first edition of Understanding English Grammar in 1982.
And I continue to demonstrate its value as a visual aid in the 6th edition
of UEG, which my co-author, Bob Funk, and I are now working on.)

The there-transformation, which  you cite--There is a unicorn in the
garden--demonstrates not only a problem, but a strength of traditional
diagramming, in that it shows the underlying pattern--NP be ADV--and the
ability we have to shift the subject to a point of stress.  The diagram
does show the expletive There in a spot above the diagram.

But that particular sentence is an anomaly even for non-diagrammers. Here's
my discussion of it in the 5th edition (p. 131):

Add tag questions to the following sentences:
There's a good movie on TV tonight, _____________?
There were a lot of students absent today, _________________?
Now explain why some linguists prefer to call THERE the subject of the
sentence rather than an expletive.  Give other evidence to support or
refute that position.


The students will, I hope, recall the discussion a few pages earlier about
subject-verb agreement.  That's the tricky part if you insist on the
tag-operation as proof that THERE is the subject.  Perhaps you're calling
it a pronoun of sorts, one that can be either singular or plural, taking on
the number of the following noun phrase.

As for Chomsky's famous JOHN IS EAGER/EASY TO PLEASE example--of course a
diagram is going to fail in making the distinction in deep meaning.  Every
surface analysis will fail--that's Chomsky's point.  That's what gave us
his deep/surface theory.  But on the surface, the diagram works:  EAGER TO
PLEASE and EASY TO PLEASE both function as subject complements.  Here's
another problem sentence you might have cited, one that I discuss in UEG5
to explain Chomsky's point further: The shooting of the hunters was
astonishing.  The subject is a gerund phrase, no matter whether the hunters
are shooting or being shot!

But sometimes the traditional diagrams work better than branching trees.
These examples are also from UEG5 to demonstrate again the deep/surface
distinction:
Flying planes can be dangerous.
I don't like burping babies.
You can diagram these in two ways, showing the gerund/particple distinction

When I first began teaching grammar to future teachers, I used the books
that my predecessor has used:  Stageberg's, Introductory English Grammar,
describing new grammar with ten sentence patterns; House & Harmon's
Descriptive English Grammar, a traditional eight-parts-of-speech
description with traditional diagramming.  I had lots of trouble fitting
them together, mainly because H & H was so rigidly traditional: For
example, there was no such construction as a phrasal verb, no part of
speech known as a particle. As a result, the sentence HE CAME BY HIS NAME
IN A PECULIAR FASHION was analyzed exactly like HE CAME BY THE OFFICE IN A
BIG HURRY.

I decided to write my own book.  The result of the marriage of NEW grammar
and traditional diagramming is Understanding English Grammar.  I should
mention too that I altered the Reed & Kellogg system in diagramming one
structure, and I notice that other grammar authors, when they demonstrate
traditional diagramming, follow my method.

I always told my students that the ten basic sentence patterns and their
diagrams provide a framework on which they can organize the details of
sentence expansions.  The students understood that concept when I asked
them to visualize a closet without hooks and hangers and shelves, where
they tossed all their stuff into a big pile on the floor.  The diagrams of
the basic sentences are the hooks and hangers for the their conscious
understanding of sentences.

And, yes, there are exceptions.  I can't diagram every structure via Reed &
Kellogg.  But for many--if not most--students, the visual aid of the
diagram is a valuable learning tool.

Martha Kolln



>This categorical statement has some problems with it.
>
>> The Reed and Kellogg diagrams unambiguously symbolize almost all the
>> relationships found among words in English sentences.  There are
>> exceptional usages that create difficulties, but this is true of any
>> system of classification.
>
>If I remember the principles of diagramming correctly, UNICORN in the
>following two strings would occupy the same slot.
>
>1) A unicorn is in the garden.
>2) There is a unicorn in the garden.
>
>Yet, UNICORN has a different relationship in (1) as opposed to (2).  If
>you make tag questions out of (1) and (2), you have the following:
>
>3) A unicorn is in the garden, isn't it?
>4) There is a unicorn in the garden, isn't there?
>
>Why should that be the case if UNICORN has the same relationship?
>
>I have been looking at Lester's Grammar in the Classroom.  He does not
>provide a diagram for (4), but he provides diagrams for (5) and (6).
>They have the same structure.
>
>5) John is easy to please.
>6) John is eager to please.
>
>As anyone who has read the most elementary discussion about Chomsky
>knows, John does not have the same relationship to the rest of the
>string in (5) and (6).
>
>7) It is easy to please John.
>8) *It is eager to please John.
>
>In fact, John in (6) is the one who wants to please.  John is (5) is the
>one is pleased.
>
>Bob Yates
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> It seems to me that the criticisms usually raised against diagraming are
>> applicable to any system of symbolization.  You can in some sense
>> understand things in themselves without knowing how to represent them
>> according to a particular system of symbolization.   (I have to admit
>> that you were right to call me on the exaggerated claim that if you can't
>> diagram a sentence, you don't understand its structure.  In saying
>> that, I was taking for granted an understanding of the rules of
>> diagraming.) There is a sense in which people know words that they cannot
>> spell or tunes for which they could not write the musical notes.
>> Nevertheless, systems of symbolization have huge advantages.  They enable
>> you to photograph your understanding, examine it, compare it to others'
>> etc. For these reasons, I don't see how the study of grammar can get along
>> without diagraming or an equivalent system of symbolizaiton.
>>
>> On Tue, 27 Jun 2000, Susan Witt wrote:
>>
>> > At 6/27/00, you wrote:
>> > >Three cheers!  I feel exactly the same way.  If you can diagram the
>>sentence,
>> > >you understand its structure.  If you can't, you don't.
>> >
>> > I disagree.  Diagramming a sentence means that you have to understand not
>> > only what an adjective is, but where in the diagram it belongs.  Looking at
>> > sentence diagrams to me is like looking at Arabic writing -- it really
>> > doesn't make sense to me, even though I understand the words.  Maybe that's
>> > because no one has ever tried to explain it to me.
>> >
>> > I can't believe that this means I don't understand sentence structure.  I
>> > may not know the words that categorize things, but I do know how the words
>> > relate to each other and how they should go together.  I can read what I
>> > call "3 paragraph sentences" and know whether they are written in correct
>> > English and what they are talking about.  (Put Persian and English
>> > complexities together in a sentence, as a writer named Shoghi Effendi does,
>> > and you come up with some whopper sentences!)
>> >
>> > Moreover, I can understand sentences well enough to help my students make
>> > sense of them and understand why one way of saying things is appropriate
>> > formal English and another is not.  While I do use a simple, modified form
>> > of diagramming, I have never used the formal diagramming in English texts
>> > to do this.
>> >
>> > I am quite sure that this technique is very helpful for some students, but
>> > seriously doubt that it is the most important thing or the most useful
>> > thing for all students.
>> >
>> >
>> > Susan Mari Witt
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > 240 ERML, MC-051
>> > 1201 W. Gregory
>> > Urbana, IL  61801
>> >
>> > Phone:  (217) 333-1965
>> > Fax:      (217) 333-4777
>> >
>> > [log in to unmask]
>> >