How to diagram "accustomed to"??

[jayjay5531]

As in:

His jacket showed red wrists accustomed to being bare.

(Adapted from Madame Bovary, Flaubert pg. 2).

 

[Shoreditch]

I do not know what diagramming means, but, I, as an incompetent twit, wish to make a tentative attempt at determining the function of "accustomed to". Why attempting? I like to see my nonsense in print. It is one of my caracter faults, please forgive me.

I think a "that/which were" is missing from the sentence. The words have been wiped out via a means of a grammatical method called ... um ... I have no idea.
Somehow I feel the "accustomed to" belong together.
This is merely an intuition for which I can't find any irrefutable base. I am a bit reluctant to believe accustomed is adjectival. I think it has more verbal force than it has adjectival one. Again, intuitions.

I am not a teacher, please wait for a creditable answer from a trusthworty member. I am not one. :-(

 

[konungursvia]

Isn't that like drawing the bathroom on the seventh floor, and only the bathroom on the seventh floor?

 

[5jj]

I do not know what diagramming means, but, I, as an incompetent twit, wish to make a tentative attempt at determining the function of "accustomed to". Why attempting? I like to see my nonsense in print. It is one of my caracter faults, please forgive me.

If you don't know the answer, please don't respond. When people see in 'New Posts' that someone has submitted a message, they come in hoping to find an answer, not a guess.

Sorry, jayjay, I can't help, as I am not an expert on (or a fan of) diagramming. If Frank sees your post he should be able to give you an answer.

 

[konungursvia]

Phew! For a moment there, I thought someone had realized I was an incompetent twit.... sorry for my lack of answer. I meant that a diagram of a part might not be as useful as a diagram of a whole.

 

[jayjay5531]

I agree that there's an implied "that were" here. The independent clause of this sentence is "His jacket showed red wrists". Then there's an adjective clause modifying "wrists": "that were accustomed to being bare."

For the subordinate adjective clause "that were accustomed to being bare":
"that" is obviously the subject
"were accustomed" is the verb
"to being bare".... what is that? Even if you don't know about diagramming you can probably help me if you can describe what it's role in the sentence is.

I'm starting to think that the "to" is just part of the verb "accustomed to", which would make "being bare" a gerund phrase that serves as the direct object of "accustomed to". What do you think?

Thanks so much

 

[Frank Antonson]

You've figured it out. Perfect.

For implied, though, there is the term "ellipsis", or elliptical.

"To be accustomed to" is an awkward infinitive, but I think that that is the case.

Frank

 

[jayjay5531]

Thank you Frank!
So for elliptical words (is that how it's used?) such as "that were", do I just leave the line on the diagram blank? Or put an X or something? Or the words themselves in parentheses?

 

[Sawsawxx]

How to diagram "accustomed to"?? As in: His jacket showed red wrists accustomed to being bare.

"Accustomed to" is not a syntactic unit of any sort, only a fragment of the adjective phrase "accustomed to being bare", in which the adjective "accustomed" is head and the PP "to being bare" is its complement. It isn't elliptical, though: no words are actually missing from the sentence. Relative clauses aren't the only expressions that can function as post-head modifier. We also find AdjPs (as in your sentence), PPs ("a hut in the forest"), NPs ("our friend the mayor", and non-finite clauses ("the person for you to consult", "students living on campus", "a letter written by his uncle").

 

[Frank Antonson1]

We are still waiting for the diagram.

 

[Frank Antonson1]

Sawsawxx, you do not appear to understand Reed-Kellogg.

 

[Sawsawxx]

Sawsawxx, you do not appear to understand Reed-Kellogg.

I'm familiar with it, but I prefer trees. Here's a diagram of the whole sentence.