True yeah, my mistake. I shouldn’t have implied that ‘a hotel’ was necessarily the object of a verb. It’s a noun, and could be anywhere in a sentence that you could put a noun. The fragment is missing at least a subject and a verb.
You are on the right track with the relative adverb concept, and I think thinking of them joining clauses is fine. They allow you to use whole clauses as modifiers. Elliot refers to these types of words as subordinators in his Grammar as Functions article:
A subordinator takes one finite clause and returns a modifier. How is this like a conjunction? It joins two things. The clause becomes a modifier, so it’s joined to whatever it modifies.
If the subordinator is a “subordinating conjunction”, then the modifier it returns must modify a clause. For example, the phrase “because I like reading” can’t modify a noun. It has to modify a clause like “I read a book”.
Relative pronouns like “who” are a type of subordinator that can create other types of modifiers, e.g. modifiers for nouns. For example, “I met a person who was tall.” uses the clause “who was tall” to modify the noun “person”.
However, I think your tree is wrong.
If we take your new sentence:
I reviewed a hotel where the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was staying.
You have two clauses, and a subordinator. One is the main clause, and one is the subordinate clause which is modifying something in the main clause. So there are a few things to try, and using your intuition and understanding of what the sentence means I think would help. You could try a couple out and see if anything clicks. Only if it seems interesting/not too hard though, no pressure.
I was too tired for that yesterday. Last project I had a day where I did 6-7 hours. So I think I don’t need to try to catch up immediately. Most likely I’ll do 4 hours in a day when I have more energy.
I don’t think I came across relative adverbs/pronouns being described as subordinators in my short research. Neither did I remember this from the functions article.
The hint says something else in the main clause should be modified. My main candidate is “staying”. That should make sense since then the subordinator clause is telling is where the staying happened.
Question based analysis:
Context: The then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was staying.
What detail do we know of the staying? where. We know where the staying happened.
Where was she staying? Something that was reviewed.
Who did the reviewing? I.
What did I review? hotel.
Which hotel? a.
Shorter version.
Context: The then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was staying.
What detail do we know of the staying? where.
Where was she staying? a hotel I reviewed.
Makes sense to me. I can’t see the subordinating clause modifying anything else in the main clause.
I’m not sure if it joining a phrase and a clause makes it wrong (not two things of the same type). I think it’s wrong anyway because “where” can’t be the complement. This makes more sense as a tree:
Causative verbs are verbs that indicate that one individual, object, or event causes another to do something.
I think it makes more sense to say that the thing that is caused to do something is the subject of what that thing is caused to do. “The thing that is caused to do something” suggests it receives the causing, so it kinda fits as the subject of the verb as well. Perhaps it plays both roles?
“They make smile” doesn’t make sense. “Smile” needs “me”. “They make me” isn’t complete either though. So this test doesn’t really differentiate between the two choices.
Question based analysis:
What happens? Make.
Who makes? They.
What do they make? Smile. They make someone smile. (Answer in itself doesn’t feel natural)
Who do they make smile? Me. (The question feels natural)
or
What do they make?: Me. They make me do something. (“Me” in itself feels more natural as an answer)
What do they make me do? Smile.
I’m not sure the question based analysis let me differentiate either.
Time table for entire project one week in (+ 45 min 3 weeks ago):
Total time
14:59
grammar tree practice
14:59
\_ meta
2:44
\\_ fill in project template
1:29
\_ review grammar material
2:53
\\_ FI article
2:53
\_ topics to research
3:02
\\_ using commas
3:02
\_ grammar tree exercise collections
6:20
\\_ first attempt at exercises
3:21
\\_ error correction
2:59
I have spent more time on pure research as opposed to doing exercises than I thought I would. I could have tracked more of the time in exercises in research instead, but I guess it’s fine this way since that research is needed for specific problems in exercises.
I have done less exercises than I thought I would have done at this point. This was how I wanted to do it though, to have time to research topics that come up in the exercises.
I also want to do a high volume of exercises, so at some point I should try to quickly do many exercises that aren’t too hard.
I mean to just say that thinking in terms of ‘joining’ was fine, I shouldn’t have added the bit about the clauses. I can see how my response is confusing, sorry. I was responding specifically to this:
In some cases (subordinate conjunction), a subordinator joins clauses, but in other cases (relative pronoun/adverb, maybe others) it allows you to use a clause to just modify part of the sentence (single word, phrase). A subordinator doesn’t have to join things of the same type, except when it’s being a subordinating conjunction.
That would be fine. A subordinator can allow a clause to modify a single word. It doesn’t have to join like things like a conjunction does.
However, your trees are still wrong. Did you consider which clause was the main clause, and which was the subordinate/modifier clause?
I’m not sure about how to diagram “great to read”. It doesn’t make sense part of speech wise to say that “to read”, a noun infinitive, modifies “great”, an adjective. Unless “to read” can function like an adverb. My research lead me to find out about adjective complements. So “to read” complements “great” and should therefore be its child.
are
books
comic
great
to read
30 min
I think this was a good explanation:
But doesn’t something that modifies an adjective have to be an adverb though? It seems so:
I planted a tree last spring
I think “last” should modify “spring”, but what should “spring” be the child of then? It feels like it should be modifying “planted” as if it was an adverb or preposition. I think the sentence “I planted a tree in the last spring” means the same. So can I assume “in” and “the” are implied?
planted
I
tree
a
[in]
spring
[the]
last
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English seems to suggest that “in” shouldn’t be used with “last”, but it doesn’t mention “in” and “the” together with “last”. “In the last spring” sounds more natural to me than “in last spring”, although it sounds a bit clunky.
Knowing the difference between “in the last year,” “last year,” and “in the past year” isn’t that difficult. All three phrases are the same,
So “last spring” and “in the last spring” means the same. I think I’ll conclude my implied words are OK.
21 min.
Fire used “during” instead of “in” and “the”. “During last spring” also means the same as “in the last spring” in this sentence (in general too? At first I thought “during” couldn’t describe something happening at particular point of time, but it can describe something happening at a particular point of time which is within another stretch of time).
I didn’t do #2 and #3 and I sort of did #7, I didn’t really say it was a special case and I didn’t find a dictionary that gave rules for when to omit preposition. I did exactly #1, #4, #5 and #6.
Project Notes
Time table for today:
Total time
1:33
grammar tree practice
1:33
\_ meta
0:14
\_ grammar tree exercise collections
1:19
\\_ first attempt at exercises
1:19
I’ve only done approximately 5 hours 30 minutes for the last 4 days. It should be around 8-12 hours for 4 days. So I’ll have to pick it up from now on.
No, I assumed the main clause had to be “the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was staying”. I think I assumed it had to be the main clause since it was the non-fragmented clause.
For my sentence my top candidate for main clause is “I reviewed a hotel” (include “where”?). The other option I have to consider is whether I have actually grouped the words correctly into each clause. OK, I think I had the clauses correct.
If I had the main clause and subordinator clause swapped, I should figure out what makes a clause the main clause. I’ll do some research.
A clue I thought of now is that the subordinate clause comes right after the relative adverb. The main clause is usually the first clause in the sentence.
It seems the term relative clause is used for relative pronouns/adverbs. Subordinate clause are dependent on the main clause and don’t make sense on their own. Relative clauses add information or modify a noun in the main clause. That means it’s dependent on the main clause and is therefore a type of subordinator clause.
If the main and relative clauses are reversed then the noun that is modified by the relative clause has to be “hotel”.
Short question based analysis:
Context: I reviewed a hotel
What additional information about the hotel? was.
What/who was? the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.
What was she? staying.
Can I explain conceptually why the clauses are main and relative/subordinate? The relative clause is telling us additional information about the hotel. “The then prime minister was staying” leaves us asking where she was staying unless we know of some other context. That text can make sense if it either is a subordinate clause or if there’s added a prepositional phrase to modify “staying”.
Mom said that it will be fun to watch it get bigger
When it is bigger, birds will build nests and live in it
When it is bigger, squirrels will build nests and live in it, too
I am glad that I planted a tree
There was once an Ant who was very thirsty, and she went down to the brook to drink, but the current carried her away down the stream
First attempt
I planted it in my backyard
planted
I
it
in
backyard
my
< 1 min
Mom said that it will be fun to watch it get bigger
Rewriting trick:
It will be fun to watch it get bigger; mom said that.
Here “that” refers to the first clause. “That” was originally also doing the job of the “;”, joining the two clauses.
The second “it” refers to the tree that was planted. The first “it” is more interesting. What is is “it”? I think it’s just talking about the experience of watching the tree get bigger.
If “fun” a noun or an adjective? It says something will be fun, “be” is a linking verb, so it’s an adjective.
When it is bigger, birds will build nests and they will live in it.
9 min
I noticed the issue where it seemed like “and” was joining two groups that weren’t the same part of speech, so I added the implied words to make them the same. In Fire’s case one is a noun infinitive with an object and the other is a noun infinitive modified by a prepositional phrase. I think both are noun infinitive phrases.
My tree works but it has unnecessary implied words. Fire’s is also better in that the structure is better.
When it is bigger, squirrels will build nests and live in it, too
Fire has “too” modifying “live”. I think “too” at least also applies to building the nests. I don’t think it should modify “when” and subsume the whole sentence. I think the additional information is that squirrels will also build and live.
I am glad that I planted a tree
that
am
I
glad
planted
I
tree
a
< 1 min
There was once an Ant who was very thirsty, and she went down to the brook to drink, but the current carried her away down the stream
I got started on diagramming each clause. The first one is probably wrong. There’s probably some literary use of “there was” that is not grammatically correct, I only got to research it some.
There was once an Ant who was very thirsty, and she went down to the brook to drink, but the current carried her away down the stream
She is young
Her shoes are old
She wears them to work
She goes to work five days a week
She loves her work
She is a waitress
She works at a restaurant
The restaurant is near her home
She walks to the restaurant
First attempt
There was once an Ant who was very thirsty, and she went down to the brook to drink, but the current carried her away down the stream
ChatGPT told me “there” is an expletive in “there was a cat”. Elliot also mentioned “there” acting as an expletive (is expletive a part of speech? I figured out it isn’t, there was a comment somewhere suggesting that it should be) in the FI grammar article:
In “There sits a poet.”, the poet does the sitting action, so the word “poet” is the subject even though “poet” is to the right of the verb (“there” is called an expletive).
The expletive it also serves constructions that do not have a concrete subject.
This “it” is an expletive, which lets us talk about an non-concrete subject.
It seems in who + be the relative “clause” is really a verb phrase. Take for example:
He has a daughter who is a talented ice skater.
has
he
daughter
a
who
is
skater
a
talented
ice
The relative “clause” is just “is a talented ice skater”. Though we know it is talking about the daughter; she is the subject. It seems “who” sort of lets us use a clause that seems like it doesn’t have a subject.
It seems weird that I wanted to use “down” in the second clause as an adverb, but in the third clause use it as a preposition. Both have almost the same (I can’t really explain the difference) definition: toward a lower place. New Oxford Dictionary has one definition for adverb:
toward or in a lower place or position, especially to or on the ground or another surface: she looked down | the sun started to go down | he put his glass down | he swung the axe to chop down the tree | she flicked the switch up and down.
And another for preposition:
from a higher to a lower point of (something): up and down the stairs | tears streaming down her face.
at or to a lower part of (a river or stream); nearer the sea: a dozen miles or so down the Mississippi.
The preposition one specifies stream, which we have in the third clause, it tells us where to where she is carried. “Down in the stream” is a place. In the second clause there is already a preposition to tell us where we are going: “the brook”. So “down” is really just telling us the direction and where we are coming from.
I thought of the possibility that “down” and “away” can modify the preposition instead of the verb. “Went down” and “carried away” both work, so I wouldn’t think it’s wrong to have them modify the verb. We could say “down” is telling us the direction of “to”. If we look at the tree fragment:
to
brook
the
down
It sort of says “down to the brook”. It tells us something about where we came from.
I think it makes less sense with “away down the stream”:
down
stream
the
away
“Away down the stream” doesn’t sound as good.
This would change to:
hang
they
it
then
in
tree
a
up
“Up in a tree” does sound good. We can interpret it as saying that “in” is “up” from where we are. Is that better than saying that hanging is done up? Not sure.
1 hour and 45 min in total (including 20 min from yesterday)
She is young
is
she
young
Instant.
Her shoes are old
are
shoes
her
old
10 sec
She wears them to work
wears
she
them
to
work
10 sec
She goes to work five days a week
I was considering whether there should be an implied preposition to allow “week” to be a descendant of “days”. I can’t find one that feels natural. It’s something to do with “a”, because it isn’t specifying a single week. It sort of says every week. OK, I found a definition where “a” is a preposition, Web3:
2.****: in, to, or for each : for every — used before words with an initial consonant sound
A prepositional phrase that modifies a noun is an adjective; otherwise it’s an adverb.
From the diagram perspective “near” is modifying “is”, but in standard grammar terminology it’s also called the “subject complement”, suggesting that it’s also modifying the subject. I guess what really matter is that a prepositional phrase can function as a adjective phrase and can therefore fit as a complement in a linking verb clause.
She walks to the restaurant
walks
she
to
restaurant
the
10 sec
Project Notes
I have 2 hours and 10 minutes tracked under “first attempt at exercises” so far today. I might do more later.
It sounds fine, but not as good as my last sentence with an implied “for”. The meaning is right.
I don’t think “up” can be a preposition here. It seems to me that “up” is acting on “stands” as an adverb. “Up” isn’t really saying something is going a lower position to a higher one, rather it’s saying something is standing upraised all the time, so staying in the same position. Also if it was a preposition I think its prepositional object should be a sort of location. “Up a day” doesn’t make sense like “for a day” does.
19 min
She is young and strong
is
she
and
young
strong
< 10 sec
But her shoes are not
but
are
shoes
her
not
30 sec
On its own it’s a fragment. It’s a dependent clause where the independent clause is the previous sentence. We could make a child node for “but” that is the previous sentence.
They are old
are
they
old
Instant.
She saw an ad in the paper
saw
she
ad
an
in
paper
the
10 sec
All shoes were on sale at he shoe store
were
shoes
all
on
sale
at
store
the
shoe
30 sec
She walked into the store
walked
she
into
store
the
< 10 sec
She looked around
looked
she
around
Instant.
She saw some black shoes
saw
she
shoes
some
black
10 sec
They looked good
looked
they
good
Instant.
She tried them on
tried
she
them
on
< 10 sec
They were very comfortable
were
they
comfortable
very
Instant.
They felt good
felt
they
good
Instant.
They were only 25$
were
they
$25
only
1 min
She paid cash
paid
she
cash
Instant.
I think “cash” is a noun and is the object.
She wore them home
wore
she
them
home
Home is an adverb here.
30 sec
She felt good
felt
she
good
Instant.
She was ready for work the next day
was
she
ready
for
work
day
the
next
I’m not sure whether to add a another “for” here like I did in the others. The “for” could act have both “work” and “the next day” as its children.
“The next day” means the same as tomorrow, which is an adverb. So I think I’ll just say “the next day” is an adverbial phrase.
6 min 45 sec
I was considering to add “for” or “in”, but “on” would be better.
If “the next day” is treated like a prepositional phrase than I think it can modify either “was” or “work”. Either it says that on the next day she was ready and the thing she was ready for was work, or she was ready for work and the work is on the next day.
Project Notes
This session took 55 minutes.
That’s all the exercise from the Fire collection. I skipped some early on because I thought they were too easy, but later I thought that they were so quick to do that I may as well drill in some more automatization that way. I picked this collection first because I had seen that quite a few of the exercises were quite easy, so give I might have forgotten some things from the past project these could be good to get back in.
