Diagramming Shakespeare 11

[Kondorosi]

Will you" and "nill you" are definitely two separate subordinate clauses.

That is what I was thinking from the word go.

If you make the understood words to be "(If) Will you (it) (or) (if) nill you (it), the sentence is easy to diagram -- with compound adverbial clauses joined on a dashed line by "or". You could even consider the two clauses to be appositive noun clauses embedded in prepositional phrases -- "in the case (or condition) that you will it or in the case (or condition) that you nill it".

But, the last is pretty awkward.

Agreed.

In any case, the original 8 words are perfectly understandable to a native English speaker and, so, should be diagrammable.

Will you, nill you -- the difficulty also lies in the reversed order of subject and verb. 'whether' is usually not followed by a reversed order, thus it can't be taken as an understood word in the sentence.

[Frank Antonson]

Maybe not an understood word, but I think the idea of it is implied -- possibly by the reversed order.
I will wrack my brain for comparable examples.
Let's see, "You will, you nill, I will marry you" -- not quite the same. Reversed subject/predicate order in English suggests a question. Maybe that is how the "conditionality" of "if" or "whether" is arrived at.

[Kondorosi]

Maybe not an understood word, but I think the idea of it is implied -- possibly by the reversed order.
I will wrack my brain for comparable examples.
Let's see, "You will, you nill, I will marry you" -- not quite the same. Reversed subject/predicate order in English suggests a question. Maybe that is how the "conditionality" of "if" or "whether" is arrived at.

I am at the end of my tether.

[Frank Antonson]

[Frank Antonson]

"if" "or" "if" , and two "it"s are understood.
How about that?

[Kondorosi]

I like it better.

[Frank Antonson]

The trouble is that the compound subject should be able to have an understood conjunction placed within it. I guess we will just differ on this one. I say that there are two separate predications there.

[Kondorosi]

I meant this, sorry:

[Frank Antonson]

Oh, I see what you are doing. You are joining the base lines to accept the conjunction and then splitting them again.

Well, I think it is awkward and I have not ever seen it done (no reason to not be the first).

[Kondorosi]

Finally Gene replied!
He liked your diagram more and continued to say that you should drop the two X's: both will and nill can be used intransitively.