So here’s a tip: I think you’re underestimating/underusing word order clues.
In English, simple modifiers tend to modify something within the next few words to their right. (And prepositional phrases tend to modify something a little to their left.) If you’re going to violate that, you should have a reason.
This has direct relevance to analyzing the sentence and also can be used for testing things. If you think a word modifies something, try putting it in front and reread to see how it works. Here are three examples with the moved word bolded and in the third one I also deleted a comma:
Creatures of Lummox’s breed always were ready for a little snack, even after a full meal.
Creatures of Lummox’s breed even were always ready for a little snack, after a full meal.
Creatures of Lummox’s breed even were always ready for a little snack after a full meal.
For each of these, consider:
Does it make sense?
Does it work grammatically?
Did the meaning change compared to the original?
You can also try moving both words, in either order, with or without the comma, and see if any of those versions provide useful information:
Creatures of Lummox’s breed evenalways were ready for a little snack, after a full meal.
Creatures of Lummox’s breed alwayseven were ready for a little snack, after a full meal.
Creatures of Lummox’s breed evenalways were ready for a little snack after a full meal.
Creatures of Lummox’s breed alwayseven were ready for a little snack after a full meal.
@Eternity Follow along on this discussion but don’t worry about understanding all the details or doing activities.
Yes this does make sense. It seems like you would choose to write it this way if you wanted to emphasise ‘always’. So this indicates that ‘always’ works as a modifier of ‘were’. I don’t think the meaning has changed compared to the original. As for whether it works grammatically, I just noticed I’m not entirely sure what that would mean. Something like, the sentence is structured in such a way as to not be breaking grammar rules? Or whether the sentence is structured in such a way that it makes good sense?
So I think this is a good sign that ‘always’ is a child of ‘were’.
Now, this seems wrong. It doesn’t read well. I would say it isn’t structured properly. I don’t think it makes sense. It seems strange to not have ‘even’ right before ‘after’. That makes me wonder if ‘even’ it’s an adverb modifying ‘after’. I don’t think I’ve seen a preposition being modified yet.
Okay that makes me think that a rewrite like:
Even after a full meal, creatures of Lummox’s breed were always ready for a snack.
and like:
Creatures of Lummox’s breed, even after a full meal, were always ready for a snack.
In which ‘even’ is kept with the prepositional phrase and the phrase moved to places where prepositional phrases normally always work (start, middle in front of verb, end), still totally make sense and have the same meaning as the original, but perhaps with a different emphasis.
This to me has much the same issues as the previous sentence. To me the removing of the comma has not made much difference to how the sentence reads or seems structured. I think I’m convinced that ‘even’ isn’t a child of ‘were’ now.
Cool. I think I have understood this. Since what modifier words modify are usually only a word or a few words to the right of the modifier, you can test for what a modifier modifies by changing the word order and considering whether it still makes sense in a more usual position (e.g modifier just to the left of what its modifying.) Is that on the right track?
So, seeing your sentences with ‘even’ just to the left of ‘were’ made me think that perhaps ‘even’ wasn’t a modifier of ‘were’. Also having ‘even’ separated from ‘after’ was strange. ‘even’ seems to now make sense to me as part of the prepositional phrase ‘even after a full meal’, perhaps as an adverb modifying ‘after’. The question then would be what is ‘after’ a child of?
Prepositional phrases are usually to the right of what they modify, but when they modify a whole clause, they can also work at the beginning e.g:
The flowers bloomed in spring.
In spring, the flowers bloomed.
So there are a few places I think the prepositional phrase might modify. One is the whole clause led by ‘were’, and another is ‘ready’. So I’ll try to move the phrase around to see what it could modify:
Original:
Creatures of Lummox’s breed were always ready for a little snack, even after a full meal.
Rewrite a:
Even after a full meal, creatures of Lummox’s breed were always ready for a little snack.
Rewrite b:
Creatures of Lummox’s breed were always, even after a full meal, ready for a little snack.
Rewrite c:
Creatures of Lummox’s breed were always ready, even after a full meal, for a little snack.
Rewrite a: makes sense and has the same meaning, and is structured properly.
Rewrite b: this makes sense has the same meaning, but I wonder if the way I am using the commas to insert it makes it like a parenthetical that could therefore work in more places. I think if there weren’t a pair of commas there then it wouldn’t work. Idk what to do about this.
Rewrite c: same as rewrite b.
I’m going to stop here for now because I’ve kind of spent a while on this. My current best idea I think is that ‘even’ is a child of ‘after’ and ‘after’ is a child of ‘were’.
I don’t expect to reply to this today but feel free to continue with other stuff. In general, you can do more stuff when I haven’t replied yet if you want to, and if you run out of anything to do let me know. @Eternity
yeah. maybe a subtle change (like you mentioned a change in emphasis) but no big change.
Both. This example is fine: it’s not like writing e.g. “Me eat potato.” or “I potato eat.” or “Creatures even after a full meal of Lummox’s breed ready always were for a little snack.”
If something can be a child of a higher node, it often is. Another thing to check is if it makes sense as the child of a relevant group. If it works as a child for both the top node of a group individually and for the group, that’s a good sign.
But “always” does make sense modifying “ready” too and is directly left of “ready” in the original. The word order hint suggests maybe it’s a child of “ready”. And the sentence intuitively sounds different when you move “always” (you noticed it affects emphasis), which is a sign not to do that if it’s unnecessary.
This kind of detail isn’t very important to doing philosophy. It has no significant effect on the meaning and results in two similar trees. I don’t have a really clear “this way is right and the other way is wrong” answer to give you. English sentences inherently have some ambiguity. They are attempts to put a tree in a linear form without following really clear formatting rules like s-expressions, so it’s unsurprising to end up with some ambiguities.
I agree. My intuition also flags it as a problem.
Yeah since this version reads poorly, that suggestions “even” may not be modifying “were”, so in that case the main candidate is “after”. You could also consider rewriting it with “even ready” or “even always ready” to see if it maybe it could modify something else, but those don’t sound good.
yes
The comma matters but more to something else, not to what “even” is the child of. See if you can figure out something it affects in at least one version of the sentence.
yes
yes, good tests
So looking at your original tree again, I see “after” modifying “even”. I think prepositional phrases don’t usually modify adverbs. And in this particular case, I don’t think it makes a lot of sense that “after a full meal” is providing more information about “even”. Like “after a full meal” is not a type or degree of evenness. Checking modifiers make sense as providing more information about their parent is an important check.
Both “after” and “always” should modify either “were” or “ready”. Anything else I’d call definitely wrong. And “even” should modify “after” (prepositions usually don’t have modifiers but it is allowed).
I’d go with “always” modifying “ready” and “after” modifying “were”. The “after” part seems like a clause modifier while the “always” seems like a detail within that part of the clause. I wouldn’t want to move it like “Always, creatures…” Also having “always” modify “ready” follows the author’s word order hint better.
Yeah they don’t to me either. So that’s a good sign ‘even’ doesn’t work as a modifies of ‘ready’.
I can really see the value in this way of exploring the grammar of the sentence. When I was learning grammar myself I focused a lot on the grammar trees, and less on other things like the linear word order. That could be why I was ignoring some word order clues. This is a cool way to use the linear sentence structure to find things out and test ideas about the tree. I think this technique allows me to use the intuitions I already have about English more effectively than I can with just trees.
Ok so:
Okay so without the comma, the prepositional phrase seems more like a modifier of ‘ready’. But with the comma, it seems more like it’s a modifier of the whole clause. So I think the comma matters to what the prepositional phrase is a child of.
Yeah okay I agree that ‘after a full meal’ doesn’t make sense as a modifier of ‘even’. Maybe I did that because I could sense that ‘even’ and ‘after a full meal’ should be together in some way, but couldn’t figure out how to decide how.
{1, 3}: Issues with writing can be hard, but writing issues can also be relatively easy to fix and get past.
{2, 3}: People can get stuck and stay stuck, but writing issues can also be relatively easy to fix and get past.
I think “get past” does make sense with 1. Issues can be hard, but they can be easy to get past.
I think “relatively easy to fix” does make sense with 1. I don’t think the ‘relatively easy’ part makes as much sense as the contrast with ‘hard issues’ in {1, 3}, but I think it doesn’t not make sense, and I think the ‘to fix and get past’ is a strong contrast with ‘get stuck and stay stuck’. Those ‘and’ groups fit together well as a contrast.
OK, are you ready to call that paragraph done, or do you have any specific questions/issues left? To me it looks like the analysis is good enough to have made some progress and learned something from this paragraph.
I think I’d like to check my understanding. So, since 3 makes sense as a contrast to both 1 and 2, it’s reasonable to think of 3 as modifying the group {1, 2}?
That’s reasonable. I think having 3 modify 1+2 or 2 are both good answers. That’s mainly based on sentence order: “But X” comes after 2, so I don’t think it should skip/ignore 2 and only modify 1 (that’s not a universal rule but you’d want to have a reason to break it). The “But X” also comes directly after the 1+2 group so that version also works well. But if the author wanted “But X” to modify only 1, in general they’d put it after 1 (or the extra stuff in 2 would look a lot more like a parenthetical detail of 1 that you wouldn’t think “But X” applied to).
People often get stuck because they dismiss many errors as unimportant or unworthy of their time or attention. They claim many errors are minor and try to ignore them. They can find the error, but then they don’t care or refuse to deal with it. But people ignore some important errors. They won’t listen to some valuable criticism. They don’t find some errors on purpose because they don’t value finding those errors. They end up blocking themselves from making much progress.
[1] People often get stuck because they dismiss many errors as unimportant or unworthy of their time or attention.
[2] They claim many errors are minor and try to ignore them.
[3] They can find the error, but then they don’t care or refuse to deal with it.
[4] But people ignore some important errors.
[5] They won’t listen to some valuable criticism.
[6] They don’t find some errors on purpose because they don’t value finding those errors.
[7] They end up blocking themselves from making much progress.
ok [1] makes sense as the root node. It’s also conventional for the first sentence to be the topic sentence, and I don’t have a good reason why it might not be.
[2] is detailing one of the ways that people dismiss errors: by claiming errors are minor. That people dismiss errors is part of [1]. [2] is a detail about [1].
Is [3] a child of [1] or [2]? [3] contrasts finding error with caring about or dealing with the error. For context, the article is talking about how, in order to make progress, you must be able to find and fix your errors. This sentence says that people can find the error, but then they don’t fix it by refusing to deal with it. It’s a way that people dismiss errors. I think It’s a child of [1] as a detail on how people dismiss errors.
[4] starts with ‘but’. That means it is contrasting with something previously stated. It is conventional to contrast with the immediately prior sentence. So I don’t want to ignore that [3] is the conventional candidate. [4] says that people ignore important errors. [3] talks about finding but ignoring errors, so [4] works as a child of [3]. [2] talks about claiming errors are minor (unimportant) and trying to ignore them, so [4] makes sense as a child of [2] too. [1] is about people dismissing many errors as unimportant, so [4] makes sense as a child of [1] to. I think then that [4] can be thought of as a contrast to the group {1, 2, 3}.
[5] is talking about how people won’t listen to some valuable criticism. I think this relates to [4], because criticism of what errors are important would help people to not ignore important errors. I think [5] is a part of [4]. Hmm. I’m not so sure now. If I delete [4] from the paragraph, does the paragraph still make sense? I think it does, but something seems wrong. I think [5] is perhaps a child of [1]. Perhaps though, [5] is an example of an important error that people ignore. Not listening to valuable criticism is an important error that some people ignore. I also have an intuition that something is happening in this part of the paragraph; that it isn’t just a list of sentences; that there is some kind of structure here. This could be it? I’m going to have [5] as a child of [4] as an example of an important error.
[6] I think works well as a child of [1].
[7] also works well as a child of [1]. I think a paragraph of just {1, 6, 7}, with 6 and 7 being the children of 1, makes sense.
This took about 1hr. I think maybe I should be working on smaller paragraphs for now.
Besides ignoring errors, people also go wrong by trying to worry about every little maybe-error in unreasonable ways. This is often called perfectionism. They count anything besides perfection as an error and it bothers them. This attitude can also block progress.
this is fine. 1hr is long though. so, yeah, do smaller stuff.
For 4 which begins with “But”, I don’t think it’s following up specifically, only, exclusively on 3 (or 2), so having it as a child of 1 makes sense.
For 5, yeah it’d also be reasonable as a child of 1, but I thought your version was maybe better.
6 could be a child of 4 because it’s kinda describing ignoring errors. it works as a child of 1 too. i’m not sure which is better.
You’d more often find more complex tree (and sentence) structures if you use paragraphs from some other more typical authors btw. I try to keep my writing simple.
‘that we met last week’ is a modifier, and it’s restrictive. it provides information necessary to understanding the sentence, it restricts what girl we mean, so that we have enough context to understand the sentence. ‘The girl was there’ doesn’t give enough context.
Jenny, who we met last week, was there.
This is non-restrictive. The modifier is not essential to understanding the sentence. It’s just extra details, if you want them.
That girl Jenny was there
This is restrictive. That the girl is Jenny is essential to understanding what the sentence means. “Jenny” is the modifier (an appositive) of “girl”.
The country that won the war was England.
“that won the war” is a restrictive modifier. Removing it from the sentence alters the sentences meaning, and it’s not just extra optional detail. It tells us necessary details about the country being talked about.
England, the country that won the war, grew prosperous.
“the country that won the war” is a non-restrictive modifier. It is optional extra detail. “England grew prosperous” is fine on its own, without the modifier.
So non-restrictive modifiers are often put in commas, and you can ignore them and it doesn’t ruin the sentence. This is similar to using brackets. You can read sentences that have brackets as if the brackets weren’t there and they still make sense.
Okay so “even after a full meal” is a modifier of “were”. Is it a restrictive or non restrictive modifier? I think it’s non-restrictive. It is an optional extra detail. “creates of Lummox’s breed were alway ready for a little snack” makes perfect sense without it. Does the comma change that?
The latter was a normal state; creatures of Lummox’s breed were always ready for a little snack even after a full meal.
It makes it seems to me that ‘even after a full meal’ now modifies ‘always’. But it still seems kind of optional to me, like a non-restrictive modifier.
I don’t think just removing a comma changes the modifier from restrictive to non-restrictive. All the sentences I wrote above as examples of restrictive and non-restrictive modifiers required more be changed than just commas in order to make sense.
