How to analyse a complex sententece with direct speech.

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Catte

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Dear members,

I am trying to find out how to analyse this sentence

"I would have asked for ten drinks one after another, if necessary,"he said—Parson's a very moderate man—"rather than bring that parcel back home again.

I am clueless - it´s very difficult and I did not find anywhere how the direct speech should be defined from the points of coordination/subordination and of clause constituents. May I ask you for help, please?
 

TheParser

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***** NOT A TEACHER *****


Hello, Catte:

What a great sentence! Many of us love to diagram sentences.

I think, however, that the moderators prefer that people post this kind of question in the "Analysing and Diagramming Sentences" forum.

I also want to know the answer and look forward to seeing the answers that you receive.

I do think that I am not completely wrong in feeling that the sentence "Parson's a very moderate man" would be considered strictly parenthetical. That is, it has no grammatical connection to the rest of the sentence. The author simply "threw" that comment into the sentence.

So I believe that we are dealing with analyzing "I would have asked for ten drinks one after another, if [it had been] necessary, rather than bring that parcel back home again," he said.

Futhermore, one of my books claims that the words "he said" qualify as a "parenthetical quoting expression" and that we need not pay much attention to it. Source: Pence and Emery, A Grammar of Present-Day English (Copyright 1947 and 1963).


James
 
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