Diagramming Shakespeare 11

[Frank Antonson]

"Will you, nill you, I will marry you." The Taming of the Shrew

[Kondorosi]

Three sentences written as one.

[Frank Antonson]

That's a cop out.

"(Whether) you want (or) you (do) not want (it), I will marry you."

[Kondorosi]

That's a cop out.

"(Whether) you want (or) you (do) not want (it), I will marry you."

[Frank Antonson]

No, that subject in the subordinate clause is not right. But I am not sure what to do about it.

I will have to think.

That's harder than I thought.

[Frank Antonson]

[Frank Antonson]

I forgot to capitalize "Will".

What do you think?

[Kondorosi]

No, that subject in the subordinate clause is not right. But I am not sure what to do about it.

I will have to think.

([you like it] or [you do not like it]) is two coordinated clauses and this coordination as one entity is subordinate to the "I will marry you" (superordinate clause). I joined the two subordinate baselines because the subordinatior (whether) equally relates to both verbs (will and nill) and there is no way to express that other than the way I did.

No, that subject in the subordinate clause is not right.

You mean that two subjects ('you' and 'you')? What makes you uncomfortable with that? PRobably you are right. This is more precise thus:

[Frank Antonson]

I know what you mean about the two subordinate clauses and the way I diagrammed the correlatve conjunctions. I could not think of a better way, however.
Which brings me to the subject that eventually we may find that Reed-Kellogg has to be tweaked a little.
I am very reluctant to do that, though, until we are certain.
I'm still not sure that your diagram is better. I will have to think about it.

[Frank Antonson]

I've had some time to think about it. "Will you" and "nill you" are definitely two separate subordinate clauses. 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. In any case, the original 8 words are perfectly understandable to a native English speaker and, so, should be diagrammable.