In the midedle 60's at the University of Nebraska, the first Freshman English course
was a study of English (just because it's worth studying, said Dudley Bailey). One of
the texts we used was W. Nelson Francis' "The English Language: an Introduction"
(Norton, 1965), Francis used a diagramming method that involved 5 constructions:
predication, modification, subordination, coordination, and complementation. The
diagramming of sentences by this method ended up looking like an inverted tree. One
advantage I saw to his method was the focus it placed on immediate constituency. It
also encouraged us to see most adverbials as sentence modifiers (a description that
makes sense of the moveabililty of adverbials).

I don't have my students do any diagramming, but this is the method I use when I'm
chalk-talking my way around a sentence.

For those coming to the conference, I'll have a copy of Francis you can look at.





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Dave Sawyer, local host,
ATEG-2000 <http://sites.netscape.net/desawyer>
North Hennepin Community College
7411 85th Ave. N.
Brookly Park, MN 55445
H: (612) 929-3713; (O) (612) 424-0732
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