Figuring out how to organize the conjunctions and clauses for sentences with more than one clause conjunction is relatively hard and also generally not crucial to philosophy analysis. So don’t worry about it too much.
A reason it may be both on the harder side, and the less important side, is because English often doesn’t precisely and clearly express it. English sentences put several clauses with conjunctions in linear order without special grammar rules or hint words to tell you exactly what tree they should be. If readers will have a hard time interpreting something precisely, authors may know that and be less likely to rely on precision in that area.
To look for errors I used mainly Fire’s project, Max tutoring sessions, and Max’s latest trees.
I’ll call “viewing subordinating conjunctions” as the conjunction model, and “governing a clause” as the modifier model from now on.
Errors in exercises
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.
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”
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”.
I looked up “should” in the New Oxford dictionary, which says it’s a modal verb, so I could research modal verbs. I could also research the use of “that” and nonfinite verbs. I think I want to at least do part 3 first. I may research this stuff after the project, or in a later grammar learning project if I think my goals right now doesn’t require it.
I read Grammar as Functions. It made sense to me. I think I already sometimes thought of sub-trees returning another thing, like a prepositional phrase returning a modifier. I think doing the arithmetic trees helps with that, since you’re always replacing sub-trees with a number.
@Elliot where did you download your third-party dictionaries from? Like Merriam-Webster 1913 and 1828, OED, etc. I know how to add them to the dictionary app if have them downloaded.
Part 3 bonus trees from the article.
I only made the outline and didn’t bother to export to MindNode to take screenshots.
Playing sports is fun.
is
playing
sports
fun
I want to sit.
want
I
to sit
I made a request to see John.
made
I
request
a
to see
John
Help me find an interested party to buy my interesting book
verb: help
subject: you (implied)
object: me
adverb infinitive?: find
object: party
determiner: an
participle: interested
adverb infinitive?: to buy (or adjectie infinitive which modifies “party”?)
object: book
determiner: my
participle: interesting
help
[you]
me
find
party
an
interested
to buy
book
my
interesting
John went to the store because he wanted milk.
because
went
John
to
store
the
wanted
he (John)
milk
I wanted an iPhone so I bought it.
so
wanted
iPhone
an
bought
I
it (an iPhone)
“the thing you said yesterday about cats”
said
you
thing
the
about
cats
yesterday
After lunch, after John sings, he loves playing games.
I had to leave early and can’t come back for some time, possibly not today, so I’ll post what I had in the mean time.
I didn’t have time to export the trees to MindNode, so I’ll just post the markdown outline.
Exercise 2, 9, and 10. Are not finished. I was uncertain of “don’t” (what should be root?), so I skipped them with the intent to come back to them after I had done the rest. I’ll post what I did so far and how long that took. Don’t spoil the answers, but you can give very small hints, if you want to, especially on the "don’t"s .
Part 3 exercises
“Running fast isn’t fun.”
abbreviation: isn’t = is not
linking verb: is
adverb: not
subject (gerund): running
adjective: fast
is
not
running
fast
fun
3 min
“I don’t want to stand on my porch when it’s wet.”
verb: want
subject: I
abbreviation: don’t
is
not
running
fast
fun
1 min 30 sec
“Swimming after work is too tiring.”
linking verb: is
subject (gerund): swimming
prepositional phrase → adjective: after work
complement (gerund): tiring
adjective: too
is
swimming
after
work
tiring
too
4 min
“John gets sweaty when he does his exercise routine.”
subordinating conjunction: when
main clause: John gets sweaty
verb: gets
subject: John
object (participle): sweaty
subordinate clause: he does his exercise routine
verb: does
subject: he (John)
object: routine
adjective: exercise
determiner: his (John’s)
tree:
when
gets
John
sweaty
does
he
routine
his
exercise
11 min
“I gave him gifts.”
verb: gave
subject: I
object: gifts
indirect object: him
implied word (preposition): to
prepositional phrase → adverb: to him
gave
I
gifts
[to]
him
3 min
“I love to throw boomerangs to myself.”
verb: love
subject: I
infinitive: to throw
object: boomerangs
prepositional phrase → adverb: to myself
preposition: to
pronoun: myself
love
I
to throw
boomerangs
to
myself
3 min
“When a movie is boring, I stop watching.”
subordinating conjunction: when
main clause: a movie is boring
linking verb: is
subject: movie
determiner: a
complement: boring
subordinating clause: I stop watching
verb: stop
subject: I
gerund: watching
implied word (object): it (the movie)
tree:
when
is
movie
a
boring
stop
I
watching
it
6 min 45 sec
“I like reading non-fiction books out of order.”
verb: like
subject: I
object (gerund): reading
object: books
adjective: non-fiction
adverb: out
prepositional phrase → adverb: of order
like
I
reading
books
non-fiction
out
of
order
5 min 30 sec
“My broken speakers don’t work for making sound.”
0 min
“FYI, working at the CIA is cooler than the FBI.”
linking verb: is
subject (gerund): working at the CIA
prepositional phrase → adjective: at the CIA
complement: cooler than working at the FBI
4 min 30 sec
I think the object is just the “that”, which refers to the “Ayn Rand was wise”. In this version, “that” has some sort of subordinator/conjunction job too. You can’t just write two clauses in a row (actually we routinely do that in English but I tend to interpret that as people omitting an implied “that”). Just like nouns, clauses have to go in a grammatical slot not just be put anywhere. The “that” both allows you to have another clause after it and also refers to it.
Purpose of post: to analyze the nature of my error.
I said that the meaning of the sentence tells us that “that” should refer to “What “I” is thinking about” (“Ayn Rand was wise”). A different model is expected to change some views of the sentence, but the sentence has some meaning that any model has to conform to. I changed the model, applied what I thought the model change would do and didn’t realize that the change violated the meaning of the sentence. That’s a type of error to look out for, i.e. making a model change and forgetting what the new model has to conform to. That might be a very general type of error though.
Don’t think it makes sense for “when” to be child of “do” when it’s also conjoining two other things. It’s kind of doing both the modifier model and conjunction model for the same word, at the same time. Also “want to stand on my porch” doesn’t have a subject, there could be an implied “I”, but I think “I” is the subject of “do” and shouldn’t be used twice here.
Final tree (the tree that matches the analysis above for this sentence):
abbreviation: don’t
verb: do
adverb: not
subject: speakers
determiner: my
adjective: broken
object (noun infinitive): work
prepositional phrase: for making sound
preposition: for
noun (noun infinitive): making
object: sound
linking verb: is
abbreviation (prepositional phrase): FYI
preposition: for
noun: information
determiner: your
subject (noun phrase): working at the CIA
noun (gerund): working
prepositional phrase → adverb: at the CIA
complement: cooler
prepositional phrase → adverb: than the FBI
preposition: than
implied words: working at
noun (gerund): working
prepositional phrase → adverb: at the FBI
preposition: at
noun: FBI
determiner: the
So I think “sweaty” is a participle. But I can’t have a participle (adjective) be the object. I think our error is that we have “gets” as action verb, while it should be a linking verb. Thus sweaty would be the complement, and could be be participle (adjective) instead gerund (noun).
Two times I had an participle only listed as adjectives.
I can work on recognizing participle vs adjective.
This should be the object of “love”. I usually did “(noun infinitive)” for cases like this, don’t know why I didn’t this time.
Neither Fire nor @Eternity included “it” as an implied word.
Eternity included it in his conclusion sentence though.
I have “out” as an adverb while Fire and Eternity has “out of order” as a prepositional phrase.
I was unsure whether you could have two prepositions after each other like “out of” (as prepositions). I checked New Ox which said this sentence uses “out” as an adverb:
they lived eight miles out of town
I tried making a tree for this sentence, but can’t make it make sense.
lived
they
out
of
town
miles
eight
It doesn’t make sense that “miles” modifies the adverb “out”. It doesn’t make sense to have “miles” be the object of “lived” (“they lived eight miles”).
“making” should be a gerund.
“than working at the FBI” should modify “cooler”.
Explanation:
I thought of this when analyzing the sentence. I’m not sure if my version doesn’t also work. I guess I thought I didn’t like that “cooler” was modified by a prepositional phrase. But the prepositional phrase returns a adverb, so it would be fine.
It is specifically “working at the FBI” that “working at the CIA” is “cooler than”, so the “than” should modify “cooler”. There are two prepositional phrases in the sentence, so with my tree it would be ambiguous if “working at the CIA” is cooler than “FYI” or “working at the FBI”.
Under “out”, New Oxford has “out of” as a listed phrase with 3 definitions. When dealing with phrases you can put them as a single node like “Elliot Temple”. I’m not saying it’s a phrase here, but it being a phrase is one of the options to consider. Sometimes a multi-word sequence is a basic English element that functions basically like a single word with its own definition.
One of the “out of” definitions is:
2 from among (a number): nine times out of ten.
So it can work with numbers.
However, I considered this:
They lived.
Works ok.
They lived away.
Works ok.
They lived miles away.
Works ok.
They lived miles.
Not ok.
Therefore, I don’t think “miles” is the object of “lived”.
So I think (eight) “miles” is telling us how far out or away. So it’s a modifier. This probably involves some sort of special case or implied/omitted words. So I agree with your tree.
EDIT Alternatively, the “miles” might be telling us about where they lived, and modify “lived”. Again this requires a special case or implied/omitted words.
Yes, it doesn’t seem to work with grammar rules. There are exceptions and special cases, so conceptual explanations of the sentence is sometimes needed.
I guess it makes more sense than I thought, conceptually at least. I thought “miles” for sure was a noun, so it couldn’t modify “out”. I checked New Oxford and it says specifically “miles” can be used as an adverb (as a submodifier), which would make sense here. “out” is an adverb modifying “lived” and “miles” is an adverb modifying “out”. So the sentence works with grammar rules (without special cases) after all?
I think the alternative doesn’t actually work well. The link suggests reading it as:
They live at a distance of 8 miles from the town.
Here “at a distance of 8 miles” modifies “live” and you could have “out of town” after it and that’d work fine. But if the implied words are “at a distance of” then the sentence “They lived eight miles.” should be ok (since if you add in those implied words, it works), but it sounds wrong.
New Ox:
(miles) adverb [as submodifier] informal
by a great amount or a long way: the second tape is miles better.
FYI, “informal” can be a hint meaning something doesn’t really work by the normal rules but people use it anyway.
And this meaning doesn’t work in the sentence we’re dealing with. This meaning of “miles” wouldn’t take “eight” as a modifier. And in “they lived eight miles out of town” I think it’s telling you a specific distance not that the distance is a great amount or a long way.
I don’t think ‘sweaty’ is a verbal, so neither a gerund nor a participle. I think it’s just a regular adjective. Did you check the dictionary?
‘Sweat’ can be both a verb and a noun. Maybe that’s where part of the confusion is from? Lots of adjectives are made from nouns + ‘y’ like messy, hairy, spicy, etc.
Yes. It didn’t come to mind that ‘sweat’ could be a noun as well.
New Oxford has “interest” as either a noun or a verb, and “interested” only as adjective. Elliot used “interested” as an example of a participle in the article:
In Help me find an interested party to buy my interesting book. , the participle “interested” is an adjective modifying “party” and the participle “interesting” is an adjective modifying “book”.
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary is the only dictionary I found that mentioned participle for “interested”:
Etymology: from past participle of interest (II)
I wonder how to decide when something is a participle or an adjective. Perhaps “y” ending are adjectives and not participles (I checked and it seems participles can’t end in “y”). Perhaps we can think of whether the word could have an object.
“Tiring” is either an adjective or a present participle, then “too” would be an adverb. I think that if I saw an “ing” ending I immediately thought it would be gerund.
I can’t think of any object that “tiring” could have, so I think it’s better to say it’s an adjective.
