How to diagram

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Frank Antonson1

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I made a video on Youtube of the diagram of this sentence and a little discussion about it. I posted the link here over a week ago, but since I have had to re-register, my posts don't seem to be getting onto the forum. I am trying again.
 

Frank Antonson1

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Let me try this.

The name of the videos is "For UsingEnglish com 2 " without the quotation marks. My Youtube Channel is Frank Antonson. Maybe the problem is that I am including the link within a post.
 

Frank Antonson1

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I meant "video". And I forgot the "." in "UsingEnglish.com" in the title on my channel.
 

Tdol

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I made a video on Youtube of the diagram of this sentence and a little discussion about it. I posted the link here over a week ago, but since I have had to re-register, my posts don't seem to be getting onto the forum. I am trying again.

Frank,
A person cannot post links until they have posted ten times- posts have to be approved if they have links to reduce advertisers and spammers. They can be seen now. If you want, you can use your old account too- I sent you an email about it. PM me if you're interested.
 

MikeNewYork

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Ok. It seems to be working. Here is the link:

For UsingEnglish com 2 - YouTube

We'll see it I manage to get it on this time.

I watched your video and I really appreciate the effort you put into it. You did fine until you reached the point that you didn't know what to do with the noun clause. You seemed to think that a passive voice verb cannot take a direct object. In fact, it can if it is ditransitive.

For reference, the original sentence is: "I am persuaded that he is able to do it."

Persuade is often a ditransitive verb. Let's look at a possible active voice version of that sentence: Tom persuaded me that he is able to do it.

That would be: Subject (Tom) - verb (persuaded) - indirect object (me) - direct object (noun clause).

When changing that to passive voice, the indirect object (me) becomes the subject of the sentence. That has no effect on the original direct object which remains the direct object. The original subject becomes the agent and can be omitted from the passive voice sentence. I would place the conjunction (your function word) on a horizontal dotted line above the noun clause, which would be on stilts. Problem solved.
 

Frank Antonson1

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Thanks for watching my video. You might find those other links that I put in the description of interest -- especially the one about publications on R-K.

What you have said sounds okay to me, I just don't think it is "Reed-Kellogg". I have never heard of a "ditransitive" verb. Perhaps that is another way to deal with an objective complement. How would you diagram "The group elected me president."? That would be a classic example of an objective complement. By extension, "I was elected president". "I was chosen to be president". "Me" as an indirect object did not occur to me because it would be awkward to put "to" or "for" in front of it. If the sentence were "Tom told me that he is able to do it" or "I was told that he is able to", it would be a different case.

In any case, yes, I would put "that" on a shelf atop a dotted line coming up from the base line right after the subject-predicate divider in the noun clause.

I guess the issue is only what to call "that" and whether the noun clause is a direct object or an objective complement.

Again, thanks for watching my video. I am sorry that it took so long to get the word out.
 

Frank Antonson1

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Dear Tdol,

My old email address was at the school where I worked. I believe that they have discontinued it. That was the problem. I don't mind starting over. My new email address is mr.bisse@gmail.com
 

MikeNewYork

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Thanks for watching my video. You might find those other links that I put in the description of interest -- especially the one about publications on R-K.

What you have said sounds okay to me, I just don't think it is "Reed-Kellogg". I have never heard of a "ditransitive" verb. Perhaps that is another way to deal with an objective complement. How would you diagram "The group elected me president."? That would be a classic example of an objective complement. By extension, "I was elected president". "I was chosen to be president". "Me" as an indirect object did not occur to me because it would be awkward to put "to" or "for" in front of it. If the sentence were "Tom told me that he is able to do it" or "I was told that he is able to", it would be a different case.

In any case, yes, I would put "that" on a shelf atop a dotted line coming up from the base line right after the subject-predicate divider in the noun clause.

I guess the issue is only what to call "that" and whether the noun clause is a direct object or an objective complement.

Again, thanks for watching my video. I am sorry that it took so long to get the word out.

Well, in my opinion, we need to look at Reed-Kellogg for what it is and what is is not. It deals almost exclusively with parts of speech in a sentence and graphically represents how the individual parts interact with each other. "Ditransitive verb" is not a part of speech (verb is). A ditransitive verb is one which takes two objects, direct and indirect. Dictionaries list verbs as transitive and intransitive. A verb must be transitive to be ditransitive, but not all transitive verbs can be ditransitive.

John threw the ball (transitive). :tick:
John threw Joe the ball (ditransitive). :tick:

John ate a pie (transitive). :tick:
John ate Joe a pie. :cross:

In "The group elected me president", one could call "president" an objective complement, but I would usually call it a "resultative adjective". A resultative adjective occurs postpositively to the noun/pronoun it modifies. It describes the change in the noun/pronoun created by the action of the verb.

Examples: John cooked the steaks rare. (The action of the verb changed "steaks".)
Mr. Jones painted his fence white. (The action of the verb changed "fence".)
The group elected me president. (The action of the verb changed "me".)

Yes, I know that in some structures, indirect objects are not easy to pick out.

Consider the very simple sentence: See Spot run. I would analyze that as subject (implied imperative "you") - verb (see) - Spot (indirect object) - direct object (bare infinitive "run"). Not everyone would analyze the sentence that way. Some support the theory that infinitives and participles can be the verbs in non-finite clauses and would make Spot the subject of that non-finite clause. I don't like that theory. A big problem is that if Spot were changed to "him", then an objective case pronoun would now be the subject of the clause. That crashes too many rules for me.

Part of the problem in discussing structural grammar is the terminology. One person's conjunction is another person's function word. One person's objective complement is another person's resultative adjective. This is one reason that I choose to use the recognized parts of speech as a guide to my terminology. Otherwise we end up having a discussion about language in two different languages, with two different sets of vocabulary. One of the reasons that I like Reed-Kellogg is it forces us to think in terms of parts of speech and how they interact in the standard sentence: Subject - verb - object(s) + modifiers.
 

Frank Antonson1

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Wow! Very well put.

I believe that I agree with everything that you said.

The terminology is so different from mine, but that is ok.

One of the things that I like about Reed-Kellogg is that there is NO terminology. One still has to understand what is going on to diagram the sentence, but one doesn't have to be tripped up by the terms -- only when discussing the diagram.

One thing, though, that I would say. The diagrams of Reed-Kellogg are not about "parts of speech" but rather about "parts of sentences". Not what can be called "morphology" but rather about what should be called "syntax." In Reed-Kellogg the terminology is already completely distinct. I continually was distraught when I heard American English teachers refer to the "predicate" of a clause as the "verb". A predicate is always and only made up of a verb or verbs, but verbs are not always predicates -- e.g. gerunds. But this is still more terminology.

I taught beside another teacher who would ask her students "What are the subject and verb in this sentence". Or worse, "What are the noun and the verb in this sentence." !!!!! How could her students EVER keep it straight? Of course a dictionary give information about morphology -- parts of speech etc.; but of course not about parts of sentences.

Your knowledge of grammar is very impressive.

If you haven't already, I would again urge you to look at the link I put in my description of my video that you DID look at. I mean the first one given, I believe. In it I show three or four publications about Reed-Kellogg. I show all the pages of the first little one, which is simple, complete, but out of print.

That video is titled 1.94.1 Publications about Grammar and Syntax
 

Frank Antonson1

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Oops. I hope to catch something before somebody else does. I should have said SIMPLE predicates are always and only verbs. Complete predicates can contain all of the parts of speech. Also, a simple predicate can be compound, in which case, the conjunction making it compound could (and probably should) be considered part of the simple predicate.

Sorry about that.
 

MikeNewYork

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Oops. I hope to catch something before somebody else does. I should have said SIMPLE predicates are always and only verbs. Complete predicates can contain all of the parts of speech. Also, a simple predicate can be compound, in which case, the conjunction making it compound could (and probably should) be considered part of the simple predicate.

Sorry about that.

No problem. I understood what you meant. When I say that Reed-Kellogg is based on parts of speech, it is because of the different structures (types of lines) used for conjunctions, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, nouns, etc. The terminology may not be used, but one has to know what the words are to correctly represent them graphically.

I have very much enjoyed this discussion.
 

Frank Antonson1

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Me too. And I respect your knowledge. It is, however, with Reed-Kellogg, very important not to mix morphology with syntax. The types of lines apply to the use within the sentence , i.e. syntax. I believe that there are about 25 parts of sentences (syntax), as opposed to the standard idea of 8 parts of speech (morphology).
 
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