Proofreading

[axton]

What is the best way to break down any english sentence and know grammatically the relationships between the words?

Will a intro. course in linguistics help me achieve this goal?


Thanks in advance!

[Tdol]

It should do- to break a sentence down, you need a working knowledge of grammatical terms and an ability to work out how the words relate in the sentence. Many are fairly easy, but there are always cases where it is difficult and disagreements occur. Some people say that diagramming sentecnes helps, but I've never been that keen on it.

[Casiopea]

Great advice from tdol!

If you're interested in more, here's the code:

Step 1: find the verb. It's the glue!
Step 2: find the subject. It usually comes before the verb.
Step 3: find the object of the verb. It usually comes after the verb.
Step 4: everything else is modification:
-Conjunctions (and, or, but, while, since, and so on)
-Adverbial phrases. They answer the questions, Why, When, Where, How) and they usually start with a preposition (in, at, on, over, under--everything a cat can do).
-Adjectival phrases. They sit next to nouns and they tell us "what kind of (noun)" or you can place a form of BE (is, was, are, were, and so on) between the noun and the adjectival phrase, like this,

The man (who IS) swimming is my friend.

'swimming' functions as modification, as an adjective. It's a participle adjective. We know that because it ends in -ing.

All the best,

[axton]

Thanks for your help on this. I see it's going to take many, many hours of practice. I appreciate everyone getting back to me in such a timely manner.

Thanks again.

[Casiopea]

You're welcome, axton.