Diagraming Sentences from Hymns

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Frank Antonson1

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This might be of interest to some... I have begun to diagram select sentences taken from hymns. I do this as videos on my Youtube Channel "Frank's School". I plan to keep doing it through the Christmas season as a sort of "Advent Calendar" of Christmas carols and hymns. But the two hymns that I have begun with are "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven" -- so interesting because of the possible confusion of the noun of direct address and the direct object -- ; and "Eternal Father, Strong to Save", in which case the entire first verse is only one sentence. This fun is being had in connection with teaching about hymnody, verse, and music. The discussion is then followed by the singing of an ad hoc choir, formed to help me with the project.

In any case, those two sentence analyses can be seen in videos 3.63.1 and 3.64.1 on my Youtube channel. I THINK I got them right.
 

Frank Antonson1

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Sep 12, 2013
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Retired English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
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I am replying to my own thread, but I wanted to add that this body of literature that I am dealing with -- i.e. hymns, and to some extent carols, for the Christmas season -- is SOOO rich. A linguist would call it a "corpus", I believe. The vocabulary is often archaic -- and wonderfully so. The imagery is amazing. Since the hymns began as poetry, the sentence structure is often VERY unusual. Anastrophe occurs all over the place.
Of course, when I was teaching in public school, this body of literature would have been inappropriate because of the division between church and state. But NOW, I can indulge myself. Putting this literature into historic perspective can be so enlightening! The fact that Catherine Winkworth did all of that translating from German; the fact that up until about 1700 only psalms of David were allowed; the connection to Holland's fight for freedom evident in "We Gather Together"; etc.

I just wanted to share.
 
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