I took a break from this as a result of burnout (from another project) and then because I made a misquote mistake that I needed to think seriously about.
The full PDF of exercises can be downloaded from this page:
Quotes in this post are lines from the PDF.
Doing the homework for part 1:
The first exercises are to parse the sentences.
- When Jack came into the room, he began to remove his coat. A wise move.
First sentence: When Jack came into the room, he began to remove his coat.
- When - subordinating conjunction
- Jack came into the room - subordinate clause
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- Jack - subject noun
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- came - action verb past tense inflection
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- into the room - prepositional phrase
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- into - preposition
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- the - determiner adjective specifying which room
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- room - object noun
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- he began to remove his coat - main clause
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- he - subject pronoun referring to “Jack”
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- began - action verb past tense inflection
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- to remove his coat - object noun phrase
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- to remove - infinitive verbal acting as an adjective
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- his - determiner adjective specifying which coat
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- coat - subject noun
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Second sentence: “A wise move.”
A sentence fragment as it lacks a subject.
I think the words “It was” are implied at the start of the sentence.
So breaking down the modified sentence: [It was] a wise move.
- It - subject pronoun referring to the previous sentence
- was - linking verb
- a wise move - complement
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- a - determiner adjective (I think this is an adjective modifying “move” rather than an adverb modifying “wise” as the complement would still make sense if “wise” were removed.)
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- wise - adjective
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- move - subject noun
- Coming into the room, Jack began to remove his coat.
- Coming into the room, Jack - subject phrase
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- Coming into the room - adjective phrase
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- Coming - participle adjective affecting “Jack”
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- into - prepositional adverb modifying “coming” and governing “room”
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- the - determiner adjective specifying which room
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- room - prepositional object noun
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- Jack - subject
- began - action verb
- to remove his coat - object noun phrase (copied from previous exercise)
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- to remove - infinitive verbal acting as an adjective
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- his - determiner adjective specifying which coat
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- coat - subject noun
- Italy owes a historic debt to her great sculptors. A debt she can never repay.
First sentence: “Italy owes a historic debt to her great sculptors.”
- Italy - subject noun
- owes - linking verb
- a historic debt to her great sculptors - object noun phrase
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- a - determiner adjective affecting “debt”
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- historic - determiner adjective affecting “debt”
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- debt - object noun
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- to her great sculptors - prepositional adverb modifying “owes”
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- to - preposition which governs “sculptors”
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- her - adjective modifying “sculptors”
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- great - adjective modifying “sculptors”
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- sculptors - prepositional object noun
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Second sentence: “A debt she can never repay.”
I don’t know how to parse this. I think I understand it fine.
Rewriting it in the way I understand it: It is a debt that she can never repay.
I think that is the right answer - there are implied words “It is” and “that”. I think I can parse the sentence now.
Parsing the sentence with implied words: [It is] a debt [that] she can never repay.
- it is a debt - main clause
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- It - object pronoun referring to the debt in the previous sentence
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- is - linking verb
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- a debt - subject noun phrase
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- a - determiner adjective affecting “debt”
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- debt - subject noun
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- that - subordinating conjunction OR relative pronoun
- she can never repay - subordinate clause OR relative clause
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- she - subject noun
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- can never - verb phrase
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- can - verb
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- never - adverb
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- repay - object noun
Note: This is not a final answer and I included “OR” to indicate the answers I’m not sure about. I came across relative pronouns and relative clauses while trying to parse this and I am not sure I understand them correctly. These are incomplete notes until I better understand the distinction between subordinate clauses and relative clauses (which may come up in the Peikoff course.)
There are four more exercises (which add appositives) in this homework. I will continue in my next post another day.
Concluding thoughts:
I struggled with all this and got confused quite often which I had to process before writing an answer as per the project conditions. One thing I did when confused was ask myself systematically: Is it a noun? Is it a verb? Is it an adjective? Is it an adverb? Is it a preposition? Is it a conjunction? If I only have one positive answer, then it is the right one (at least to the best of my knowledge.) If I have multiple positive answers, then I work out how to arbitrate between them. (I might also ask suitable follow-up sub-questions like: Is it a pronoun? Is it a gerund? Etc.)
It’s been a few weeks since I did the exercises in Elliot’s grammar article and I don’t think I have properly automatised very much yet. I have a lot of work still to do practising my grammar. I’m going to make an effort to avoid taking a big break from studying grammar again as I think I may have lost progress.