Doing exercises for the first lecture. Some nesting/levels got messed up when I copied from bullet points into MindNode, which is why I took so much time on meta today.
- When Jack came into the room, he began to remove his coat.
“A wise move” modifies “began” or “to remove”. I think it makes more sense to modify the verb, since that’s the action. it was wise of him to begin.
- Coming into the room, Jack began to remove his coat.
wrong:
this is the same as the “darting up the wall, the mouse escaped”. so I still have that mentality of thinking about what’s happening instead of the grammar.
final:
<Jack <coming <into <the room>>>> began <to remove <his coat>>
- Italy owes a historic debt to her great sculptors. A debt she can never repay.
wrong:
I would translate this back to a sentence as:
She can never repay a debt.
is there a way to make the tree unambiguously represent the original sentence? so I think the clue is that these two sentences were given together (and an explanation of appositives are given right under.) so “a debt” is refering to the debt Italy has to her great sculptors. “A debt” is an appositive modifying “debt” in the first sentence, then “she can never repay” is adjectival clause modifying “debt” in the second sentence. the second sentence isn’t really a complete thought then, but neither was “a wise move.”
however this has a verb modifying a noun, so need a way to connect them. they’re connected with an implied that/which.
final:
- Learning may be easy, if you are learning from a good teacher, but teaching is work.
- The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
I had it like this to start with:
tricky.
- It is not enough that a man do the right thing, that his acts be in accord with duty; the moral man must act from duty; he must do his duty simply because it is his duty.
I was uncertain about “duty”, a noun, being the subject complement for “it is.” Then I checked “to rule is his prerogative”:
another example is “he is a policeman.”
project notes
I also listened to the first Peikoff lecture while doing other things.
Time table for today:
| Total time | 3:30 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| grammar | 3:30 | ||
| \_ meta | 0:41 | ||
| \_ peikoff course | 2:49 | ||
| \\_ listen in background | 0:54 | ||
| \\_ first try exercises | 1:55 |