Eternity Async Tutoring

[Eternity]

@Eternity

Philosopher breaks down tough sentence | Learn how to do it

• I watched this video, attempted the tree, and primarily took notes on it. I forget if I was too tired or if it was too hard (probably a mix of both) but I didn’t really tree much and focused on taking notes on the video and seeing your process.
• I did mention just watching this video before in a previous post.
• I’ll share my notes in a different post.

Notes:

• Computers can do a lot of things that can help save time.
• Things don’t have to be perfect in the beginning. Errors can be fixed later.
• Main clause first, subordinating clause second.
• Verbs take one or two nouns. Prepositions take one noun. Non-finite verbs can take a noun (or two).
• Nouns have a parent node.
• “that” can have a pro-sentence(?) role.
  • pro (prefix) - acting as a substitute or deputy for; on behalf of; for: proconsul | procure.
  • a pronoun acts as a substitute for a noun, a pro-sentence acts as a substitute for a sentence
• The more complicated a sentence is the more writing errors matter. Its already complicated. Errors make it even harder and more confusing. Its not fair to ask people to both figure out your long complicated sentence and figure out/fix your errors.
• Grammar and content are somewhat separate.
• You can do a step by step process to breakdown a long complicated sentence with some basic grammar knowledge.

[Eternity]

@Eternity

Demonstrating a type of grammar analysis (dependency trees)

• Same as the above video, I primarily took notes for this one. Will share in another post.

Hmmm. Looking back looks like I didn’t take many notes on this video. Here are the two things I noted:

• Prepositions are usually near each other in a sentence. Its, typically, easy to group together the preposition and the noun it governs in a sentence.
• You can work on different parts in isolation (subtrees) and then connect them back later.

The day I watched that video, I also created a tree (kinda?) on making grammar trees. I realized I kinda forgot some grammar stuff and was doing trees by memorized rules. Here’s the tree:

[Eternity]

@Eternity

• Practicing Core Grammar Structure (philosophy prerequisite)
• Watched this today. Took notes on it. Wasn’t much for me to do exactly. I’ll share them in another post.

• This video involves practicing core sentence trees. They are a way to shorter quicker trees with fewer nodes.
• You put in the most important stuff and leave out the least important stuff.
• What are we leaving out?:
  • details
  • simple modifiers, primary thing being left out
  • asides
• Elliot analyzed whether the “as” at the beginning of a sentence was acting as preposition or conjunction. One “trick” he did was to see if the thing after “as” was a clause or a phrase. If it is a phrase then it is a preposition. If it is a clause then it is a conjunction.

[Eternity]

@Eternity

Sentence Grammar Tree Practice with a Peter Singer Article

• Watched this today, took notes on it, and tree’d both the sentences. I’ll share them in another post.

Restaurants that serve meals completely free of all animal products have opened all over New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and in Britain, the number of vegans more than tripled in the decade from 2006 to 2016.

I was initially confused on the second part of the sentence after, and including, “and in Britain, …”. So I just tree’d the first part then watched the video:

Comparing my tree to yours I think its ok. I’m not too sure on the sequence of words I have going on with “that”.

Also in your video you didn’t use the have in the sentence. Was this a mistake?

The second tree:

Canadian consumption of beef and pork peaked in the 1980s , and has dropped sharply since.

In the video you covered that if “and has dropped sharply since” wasn’t split off with a comma then an implied word wouldn’t be needed. Didn’t know that. I honestly just forgot about group stuff with “and” when I did this and just happened to remember about implied words at the time.

[Eternity]

Last thing for today:

I did three Harry Potter Trees from the Sorcerer’s stone first chapter:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

I think “thank you very much” is an interjection that I don’t know what to do with, so I just ignored it.

They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills.

I can color code if needed.

[Elliot]

@Eternity

I can color code if needed.

Not needed if you think you’re clear on the parts of speech and the tree isn’t particularly hard for you.

@Eternity

number four, Privet Drive

I wouldn’t do this as one node. Any ideas on alternatives?

@Eternity

I think “thank you very much” is an interjection that I don’t know what to do with, so I just ignored it.

That’s fine.

@Eternity

They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

Why do you have two separate trees?

@Eternity

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills.

good

[Elliot]

@Eternity

Also in your video you didn’t use the have in the sentence. Was this a mistake?

yeah looks like i just forgot

@Eternity

I was initially confused on the second part of the sentence after, and including, “and in Britain, …”. So I just tree’d the first part then watched the video:

does it make sense now?

@Eternity

Comparing my tree to yours I think its ok. I’m not too sure on the sequence of words I have going on with “that”.

it’s fine

[Elliot]

@Eternity

Should I go through these last four videos? They seem less related to sentence trees/sentence grammar.

do they sound interesting to you?

[Elliot]

@Eternity

• I also think part of me is tired of doing this grammar stuff leading me to procrastinate on it.

Would you like to do paragraph trees? Brainstorming exercises? Writing exercises? Math or logic? Debate? Paraphrasing? Other tree types like plot or idea? Something else?

I don’t see grammar as a necessary prerequisite for doing any other stuff right now. Just a suggestion. If you want to work on something else or something specific you can bring it up.

@LMD

[Eternity]

@Elliot

I wouldn’t do this as one node. Any ideas on alternatives?

This?:

Privet Drive stays together because its a proper noun. Though I guess there is some street naming convention maybe at play here?

Mr and Mrs. Dursley are of Privet Drive, and number four is giving more information about Privet Drive.

@Elliot

Why do you have two separate trees?

Ahh. I forgot to make a note of this when posting yesterday. I was going to ask a question. I’m unsure of how to to tree this. I’m going to go ahead and color code this one and then ask my question:

There are two separate trees because I tree’d what I think I knew how to tree (did it in parts) and then was planning to ask about later. I don’t know what to do with “you would expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious”. To me it seems to be modifying “people” or something, but it looks to me that it has a verb, subject, and object. Thats a whole a phrase no? Also no conjunction. I’m confused on this.

@Elliot

does it make sense now?

Yes. I knew how to tree the second part more or less, it was the comma that confused me. I didn’t know if it was an error or a lack of knowledge on my part.

Actually do you have any advice on how to differentiate the two? How do I know the reason I’m failing at tree’ing a sentence is because of someone else’s error versus just a lack of knowledge on my part?

@Elliot

do they sound interesting to you?

Yes. I’ll go ahead and go through them and take some notes on them.

@Elliot

Would you like to do paragraph trees? Brainstorming exercises? Writing exercises? Math or logic? Debate? Paraphrasing? Other tree types like plot or idea? Something else?

Hmm. Something with math would be nice.

@Elliot

If you want to work on something else or something specific you can bring it up.

ok

[Elliot]

@Eternity

There are two separate trees because I tree’d what I think I knew how to tree (did it in parts) and then was planning to ask about later. I don’t know what to do with “you would expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious”. To me it seems to be modifying “people” or something, but it looks to me that it has a verb, subject, and object. Thats a whole a phrase no? Also no conjunction. I’m confused on this.

The sentence is

They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

Usually it’d be “you would expect X to be involved…” if it was a sentence/independent clause on its own. X would be some noun like “aliens” or “John”.

The main answer is they omitted “that”. When there’s an extra finite verb and you don’t see a conjunction, an omitted “that” is the first thing you should look for.

They were the last people THAT you’d expect…

@Eternity

Actually do you have any advice on how to differentiate the two? How do I know the reason I’m failing at tree’ing a sentence is because of someone else’s error versus just a lack of knowledge on my part?

That’s tricky. More experience with the topic helps. And more experience with people: actually talking to people and finding out more about their errors. I’ll be more confident stuff is their error if in the past I’ve seen multiple people admit to similar errors.

@Eternity

Hmm. Something with math would be nice.

ok. do you have anything you want to work on or do you want me to come up with something?

[Eternity]

@Elliot

ok. do you have anything you want to work on or do you want me to come up with something?

You can come up with something, since I assume it should be philosophically relevant. I like math in general and I have no preference as to the math.

[Eternity]

@Elliot

The main answer is they omitted “that”. When there’s an extra finite verb and you don’t see a conjunction, an omitted “that” is the first thing you should look for.

ok.

@Elliot

That’s tricky. More experience with the topic helps. And more experience with people: actually talking to people and finding out more about their errors. I’ll be more confident stuff is their error if in the past I’ve seen multiple people admit to similar errors.

That makes sense. If I notice a common pattern in peoples errors I can reasonably figure out what words they are typically dropping.

[Eternity]

Three more grammar trees from sorcerers stone ch.1:

This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that.

Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair.

None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.

I’m unsure about this last one. Specifically, I’m confused on what to do with “flutter past the window”. flutter is just the regular form of the verb, so I treated as an infinitive modifying owl, but it seems weird to me. Hmm. Maybe its modifying noticed? But its so far away. But “noticed flutter past the window” makes more sense.

[LMD]

@Eternity

I’m unsure about this last one. Specifically, I’m confused on what to do with “flutter past the window”. flutter is just the regular form of the verb, so I treated as an infinitive modifying owl, but it seems weird to me. Hmm. Maybe its modifying noticed? But its so far away. But “noticed flutter past the window” makes more sense.

Something I do that helps me is make different smaller condensed sentences that have intuitively similar structures, and then swap out things and see if that makes your intuition want the sentence to change in other ways. So for this I might go:

I noticed a man walking

I noticed him breathe heavily

I wanted him to breathe heavily

you can see that the infinitive marker ‘to’ pops out in the third one when the verb is changed to “wanted”. My intuition wont allow the sentence “I wanted him breathe heavily”. That gives me a clue to what “breathe” might be.

[Elliot]

@Eternity

Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair.

Looks like you forgot to combine your branches. Do you know how to do it?

@Eternity

This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that.

There’s a problem in the right branch. Take another look and see if you find anything you’re unsure about.

[Elliot]

@Eternity

You can come up with something, since I assume it should be philosophically relevant. I like math in general and I have no preference as to the math.

OK let’s try this.

I think Ruby (a programming language) is still pre-installed on Macs. So open Terminal and run “irb” (which stands for “interactive ruby”).

If irb doesn’t run, you’ll need to install ruby. On Mac, you can do that by installing the brew package manager then running “brew install ruby” in Terminal.

Here’s a screenshot from irb:

When you put an expression in irb, it will tell you the value of that expression. You can put in basic math and it’ll calculate it for you. A single number or string evaluates to itself. A function will evaluate to its return value.

“puts” is a function that prints a string plus a newline after and has no return value (aka returns nil). (Return value means function output.) It also accepts other data types as input and will typically do something helpful like convert them to a string then print them.

First, make sure my examples make reasonable sense to you. Look stuff up if needed.

Second, try typing some other stuff in irb. BTW you can use variables, like write “x=1+1” and then write “x+5”

Third, create a folder for working on ruby stuff in. In that folder, create a text file named hello.rb and add code to it for printing “hello world”. Navigate to that folder in Terminal and run the file with “ruby hello.rb”.

When running a ruby file, nothing is printed out automatically. If you put “3+3” on a line, ruby will just silently calculate it but won’t tell you the answer. Make and run a program that’ll calculate 3+3, save the result in a variable, and print out the value of the variable.

Also, what’s going on with the preposition “in” in my sentence “Third, create a folder for working on ruby stuff in.”? @lmd same grammar question for you too.

[Elliot]

Also, state each math topic we worked on in tutoring previously that you can still remember without rereading the old posts. For each one, consider if you still remember how to do it and say if not.

[Eternity]

@Elliot

Looks like you forgot to combine your branches. Do you know how to do it?

Yes. I forgot to combine them when I originally did it:

@Elliot

There’s a problem in the right branch. Take another look and see if you find anything you’re unsure about.

Here’s it color coded now:

I didn’t feel unsure looking through this again. After thinking about it for a while I started second guessing if I understood “mixing” correctly? I understand “mixing” to be a participle modifying Dudley. Maybe not?

[Eternity]

@LMD

Something I do that helps me is make different smaller condensed sentences that have intuitively similar structures, and then swap out things and see if that makes your intuition want the sentence to change in other ways.

Hmm. Ok. I think I see the value in making different smaller condensed sentences, but I guess I’m lacking grammar knowledge. I like your example but I’m still confused. What could “breathe” be in “I noticed him breathe heavily.” but an infinitive.

Were you agreeing with me that “flutter” is an infinitive of sorts that is modifying something and you were just giving a helpful tool or were you disagreeing with me and giving me a tool/hint to figure out for myself what “flutter” is? I’m confused on this.