FI grammar article Part 2-5 [AM]

[ActiveMind]

To look for errors I used mainly Fire’s project, Max tutoring sessions, and Max’s latest trees.

Learning Grammar - Parts of Speech Analysis and Trees

Project Summary **Summary:**This project is for me to post my attempts to learn grammar. I am starting with the practice sentences from Elliot’s grammar article. Goal **Goal:**To post 20 grammatical sentence analyses. **Metrics:**20 parts of speech analyses and 20 grammar trees. **Broader goal:**To get better at reading analysis and power up. I want to become a better learner so that I can learn philosophy, among other things. **Values:**This is part of my higher level goal to learn philos…

@Max

grammar-ex-parts12.pdf (105.4 KB) (includes links to jssyntaxtree)

---

@Elliot

Let’s call the left diagrams the conjunction or non-nested model. The right is the modifier or nested model.

@ActiveMind

For the exercises I viewed subordinating conjunctions as conjunctions, and not as governing a clause.

I’ll call “viewing subordinating conjunctions” as the conjunction model, and “governing a clause” as the modifier model from now on.

Errors in exercises

@ActiveMind

I seriously think that Ayn Rand was wise.

subordinating conjunction: that
main clause: I seriously think

• verb: think
• subject: I
• adverb: seriously

subordinating clause: Ayn Rand was wise

• linking verb: was
• subject: Ayn Rand
• complement: wise

I was blindly using the conjunction model here. The problem is that the main clause doesn’t have an object, but the meaning of the sentence tells us that there is something that “I” is thinking about. The object of the main clause would be “that”, a pronoun which refers to what “I” is thinking about. We could make “[that]” a child of “think” and let “that” be two times in the tree to show that it is acting both as a conjunction and as a pronoun. The trick Elliot showed was to rewrite to “Ayn Rand was wise; I seriously think that” and the meaning would stay the same.
The other option is to view “that Ayn Rand was wise” as the object of “think”. The object is a clause but it would be playing the role of a noun phrase. This would use the modifier model instead.
I’m not sure what to prefer. I think the first option tells us more information, but that the second option has a more elegant tree.

@ActiveMind

If universities are full of uncurious professors, don’t attend one.

subordinating conjunction: if
main clause: don’t attend one

• verb: attend
• subject: you (implied)
• adverb: don’t
• verb: do
• adverb: not
• object: one (a university)

subordinating clause: universities are full of uncurious professors

• linking verb: are
• subject: universities
• complement: full of uncurious professors
• prepositional phrase: of uncurious professors
• preposition: of
• noun: professors
• adjective: uncurious

The same error as was fixed in “Don’t chew quickly while your mouth is open.”. Except I indicated that the subject was “you” in this one. To fix put:

• “attend one” as child of “do”,
• “you”, with brackets to show it’s implied, as child of “do”,
• “not” as child of “you”

@ActiveMind

main clause: you should stamp your feet loudly, and you should clap your hands energetically

• coordinating clause: and
• clause: you should stamp your feet loudly
  • verb: stamp
  • subject: you
  • adverb: should
  • object: feet
  • determiner: your
  • adverb: loudly
• clause: you should clap your hands energetically
  • verb: clap
  • subject: you
  • adverb: should
  • object: hands
  • determiner: your
  • adverb: energetically

The overall structure of the whole sentence (“After you throw a small, red ball, while you sing, you should stamp your feet loudly, and you should clap your hands energetically, if it’s still daytime.”) seemed fine. Elliot had “if” as the parent of “and” instead of as the root, I think the meaning is the same.
However the block I quoted from me was different from his and Max’s latest trees. They had “should” as the children of “and” instead of having the "should"s modifying “stamp” and “clap”. It’s similar to the “do” and “chew” in the sentence I was corrected on. I guess that “should” would be a finite verb, and that “stamp” and “clap” are nonfinite verbs. I think they are right.
Also Max’s version has “feet” modifying “should”, while it should be the object of “stamp”.