Diagramming sentences — I remember that, and not at all fondly. I’m sure there’s a sensible purpose to it, but the English language is such a tangle that it was easy to say something trivial that would take ages for me to dissect and diagram. Don’t ask me to do it now, I’ve forgotten every bit of it.
It’s still amusing, though, to see these articles that diagram sentences spoken by a couple of well known people. Examine one of Obama’s sentences, and compare it to Sarah Palin’s words. Obama is “professorial”, always a good thing in my book, while Palin defies analysis.
I have to take their word for it, though. I see those diagrams and want to run back to my math class, which was much more comfortable.
Diagramming sentences? This must be one of the traits that separates my parents generation from mine, because I had no idea what it was. I have never seen this in any school I have been in.
Wha u say, huh?
I remember having to do this at Sheridan Junior High School way back in the day. Like PZ, I don’t think I could do this again without some refresher course. However, doing it didn’t make me want to rush to math class.
Perhaps we should call Sarah “Palin the Unparseable!”
Never heard of it.
Yes, I had trouble diagramming sentences also when in grammar school, but usually had no trouble with the written aspect of it. But now I can readily appreciate the context and simplicity of it, and if it had come more easily in my early years I would have expressed it in writing as well as PZ and Dr Nick Gotelli, a skill well worth emulating.
In my school we had “sentence combining”, which was sort of the Bizarro evil opposite of diagramming sentences. We were given a series of short sentences and required to turn them into one long comprehensible sentence. The seed sentences often used adjectives that we wouldn’t dream of using on our own (I recall “grainy” being used to describe hamburger, which had all of us at my table scratching their heads).
Oh no! I still remember the long, terrified walk to the blackboard under Sister’s scornful eyes. But come to think of it, it was the same feeling I had when called to solve a problem in math class.
Neat!!
I remember diagramming sentences in my 8th grade English class (when I was in 5th grade, dont ask). It made sense to me at the time, but like the rest of you, I’d need a refresher to do it now.
It really does perfectly illustrate the ramblingness of Palin, versus the structure of Obama.
Is it what we used to call ‘parsing’ in my day? It always seemed a pointless exercise, like learning to translate a foreign language which I was also forced into at school.
Language is like biology – all is a result of interminable evolution, and while a certain amount of dissection might be a valuable intellectual tool for both, ultimately they should just be enjoyed.
You still see those old-fashioned diagrams sometimes, but nowadays it’s generally done much differently by real linguists.
Obama may be pretty good at delivering prepared speeches (certainly better than the clown which preceeded him), but he’s not infallible. Here’s a pretty wacky speech he delivered.
Who the hell uses Reed-Kellogg diagrams anymore? I’ve certainly never used it, and I have a Master’s in linguistics.
One does not need to diagram Sarah Palin’s sentences to know that most of what she uttered was pure incomprehensible nonsense because she did not understand the issues of the day, and, that she was instructed to use certain buzz words.
(diagram that one)
The basics for those of you who have either forgotten or never done this:
http://www.geocities.com/fifth_grade_tpes/diagram.html
Here’s a poll question that should have been on the internet prior to the election: Can Sarah Palin disgram a sentence?
My freshman English teacher in high school hated diagramming. Diagramming is supposed to reveal the structure of a sentence, but you can’t fill in the diagram unless you know the structure of the sentence. There’s tiny circular reasoning problem. So Mr. Smith had us skip all the diagramming problems in our workbook. I remember cheerfully writing “OMIT” in large letters across all the blank pages devoted to diagramming. When we got to sophomore English, I got a teacher who loved diagramming. My classmates and I dutifully looked blank and said, “Oh, we don’t know anything about that. We were in Mr. Smith’s class.” Our teacher scowled and gave it up as bad business.
No doubt Mr. Smith is responsible for the collapse of educational standards in western civilization and can be blamed for our decadence and ignorance.
(And I still don’t let on that I know how to diagram sentences, because I thought it was truly goofy and pretending I didn’t know saved a lot of time-wasting busywork. I suppose I could admit it now.)
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
I find that diagramming the 2nd amendment is always fun to show gun nuts (see for example DC v. Heller) how horribly wrong they are.
Diagraming, then again, for the average Joe, also,too,the average Joes’ wife, is not the tool necessary, again for the progressing of the American people in this 20th century of Our Lord, when so many more important issues, such as faith based initiatives to restrict the awful, I kid you not, waste of tax payer money, to further protecting our youth from unwanted teen pregnancies, due to the lack of, you betcha, abstinance, as should be required for the furtherance of family based values, which this country is based on, to protect or natural resources, such as found in Alaska, with gas pipelines to funnel our natural wealth to the lower 46 and reduce our dependance on terrorist based oil economies for the future of our children. Diagram that, you elitist snobs!
Diagram that, you elitist snobs!
*imagines ascii diagram showing refuse being tossed into trashcan*
ah, my elitist-snob skills simply aren’t up to the task.
:P
As an English Major many years ago, I was required to take a course in sentence diagramming. The dingleberry who taught this class said it was a “serious” course (meaning like a math class) to offset the “literature appreciation” classes where all you had to do was “appreciate the hell out of everything you read”. We had to diagram 50 sentences before every class, where we drew them on the chalkboard. Sure enough, it sank a few English Majors; a friend of mine took it three times before he could graduate.
My favorite sentence from the course: “Dey ain’t no ghosts”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo
:)
I never heard of “diagramming sentences” either and I’m bloody 60 years old. I got a “what-are-you,stupid?” look when I asked my wife about it.
I’m with PZ – give me math any day.
How to properly poke a hornets’ nest:
1) Scout out adequate cover.
2) Find a good, long stick.
3) Make sure the hornets aren’t paying attention.
4) Poke the nest.
5) Run!
Execution of plan:
“[This] rather confirms one’s opinion that biology is what you do if you don’t have the maths for real science.” – Maximilian Arturo, Sliders
*Runs*
I was among the very small minority of students who LOVED diagramming sentences. Naturally I went on to major in linguistics in college.
I used to teach 7th grade English and yes, I taught diagramming, which I felt at the time, and still do, encouraged students to write coherent sentences. Until a student can write with clarity and proper structure, it is not usually possible to begin to take the kind of liberties we associate with creativity. One must recall (or learn) that the Picasso who could create a Guernica was a highly trained technician and could render reality exquisitely; he was experimenting with alternate ways of looking at reality. Obama speaks elegantly (and indeed works WITH his speechwriters to assure that his voice is transmitted); Palin, well, Palin just sort of makes words, ya know?
I remember doing that in middle school. It’s stupid busywork like that that steered me away from english. Just think: the more teachers insist on diagramming sentences, the more scientists and engineers we’ll get.
6th grade, ’43, 10yrs old — learned to appreciate logical structure in prose form.
Let me speak in favour of sentence diagramming, which I vaguely remember learning in — 6th? 7th? grade. Maybe later too.
If you can’t dismantle a sentence and know what applies to what, you will be vulnerable to people who can (e.g. lawyers, and the people who write Terms of Service and other guarantees), and people who write nonsense and try to foist it on you.
I get especially suspicious and annoyed with people who write memos and speeches in such a way that one cannot actually know — even after diagramming — what they meant. You might call such a speech “impressionist” language — it looks like a lake with water lilies and a decorative bridge, but when you look closer you find it’s just suggestive blobs.
Impressionist language is also useful for slandering people without being subject to prosecution. Talk show
bastardshosts are very good at this. They would find the strategy less potent if people routinely dissected their utterances.Noni
I did, too! Interesting to hear people contrast it with math – I saw/see them as related.
I agree.
Funny. For me, until I got to calculus, math was so methodical that is was easy. Just grasp the concepts and all of the numbers just fell into place.
Ah, but grammar is so slippery. Reading comes so very easily for me. Yet as much as I read, my spelling is atrocious and the act of diagramming sentences filled me with dread. All of the rules just confound me. I blame it on the bastard nature of the English language.
Diagramming? I’m taking a syntax&grammar course as an elective right now, and haven’t come across anything like that… is this like a ‘lite’ version of syntactic trees?
This form of diagramming comes in and out of favor. I’m not surprised that many haven’t seen it, or that many defend it. I dislike it because it treats indirect objects the same way as prepositional complements, and doesn’t really attach either of them properly. It’s also a bit wacky on participials and clause modifiers nor does it deal at all with modality or mood or tense. That said, it does teach people that sentences have structure, and is a pretty good intro to syntax for middle schoolers.
I had sentence diagramming inflicted on me in [shudder] grammar school. I remember asking my parents, both intelligent, educated people who had written books, about why I had to diagram sentences. My father rattled off some crap about “you’ll understand grammar much more gooder if you know how to diagram sentences.” My mother said “it gives the nuns the ability to torture students and waste time simultaneously.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that my mother was right.
I must’ve slept through something at school.
I don’t remember ever diagramming sentences, and never even heard of New Math until after high school.
I do remember learning to type on a typewriter, though. It wasn’t even electric.
Should I have said that?
-Rusty
I liked diagramming sentences, and it came in handy when I learned those two foreign languages later.
I’m so glad there is a syntactic topic in this blog! I never had to do diagramming like that, but I certainly would have LOVED it! But then, I’m a weirdo finishing my PhD in Linguistics, more specifically generative syntax/morphosyntax and formal semantics. I not only love doing trees (Linguists do it in trees!!), I also teach undergrads to do them in introductory Ling courses. When you study language like a natural phenomenon, you see that a lot of what you might think is random/slippery actually makes sense. This of course doesn’t apply to the garbage they tell you in “grammar” or style books. That stuff is anything but natural.
Diagraming sentences. Talk about the memory archives. I think I some late elementary, once in middle school, then again in high school. Can’t remember much of it now.
Me too. Hands down one of the most useful courses I ever took, especially after the PC revolution struck.
minusRusty, snap, than again, the last English lang class I took was in 1967-8. And no, nothing wrong with mechanical typewriters. First keyboard I ever used was a really small, for its day at least, second hand portable Olivetti typewriter that I got as a gift when a teenager. I loved it for its very light action and amazingly, it is still being used occasionally by my sister, as she hates computers. It has probably earned a place in a museum by now :)
Diagramming sentences is something I’ve never heard of which I take as a good thing. The last English class I took was in 1967.
As a younger twenty-something I can safely say that I’ve never seen anything like that in any class I’ve ever taken.
That said…
is an absolutely beautiful line. I’ll have to remember to use it sometime.
That’s exactly what it is. The “diagrams” are simplified syntactic trees, and the terminology is different than that used in linguistics.
Once you learn to think of sentences that way, you never have to wonder when to use “I” rather than “me” or “who” rather than “whom”.
Diagramming sentences is fun and simple… and pointless. It is a structural analysis of something much better suited to a functional analysis. There are useful sentences that are next to impossible to diagram, and useless sentences that are easy to diagram. It tells us lots about how well a sentence may be described by a particular method, but nothing about how the sentence is used–what it means in context.
A bit like keeping track of balls, strikes, hits, errors, etc., in baseball–the game does just as well without it, but it can be fun. It does not take such a scorecard to note that Obama wins, Palin loses.
I liked diagramming sentences in 8th grade. I was also a
good at math, and finished a degree in electrical engineering.
A jr. high English teacher covered diagramming in one of my classes of the mid 70s.
I found it interesting for giving a look “under the hood” of how our language worked, at least for people at that stage of learning. I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed diagramming, but it was at least something a little different than “write each spelling word five times,” or “do the vocabulary exercises in the workbook (copy dictionary data into blanks).” It seemed to bring together all those things about parts of speech and clauses/phrases that had been hammered into our heads over the preceding years, crude as it is to modern eyes.
Oh, and our student newspaper had mostly electric IBM typewriters and a stash of emergency manuals, most of both models with nervous spacebars and the occasional sticky key, slippery platen, or misaligned typebars, save for one delightful Remington that I soon claimed for myself. Nobody else wanted the monster, and fine by me. I loved it.
My flashbacks to 6th grade invariuably include Carol Hayes and Donna Matthews. Very pretty indeed.
never learned to diagram sentences, though.
My son’s English teacher decided she was going to teach her class diagramming at the end of their 5th grade year. It was a total bust. Why? Because she hadn’t bothered to teach any proper grammar in the months previously.
Because most of his 5th grade was on par with his English class, we ended up homeschooling him for 6th. We spent the first semester studying grammar (it gave him a break from composition – which he hated) and, by the end of the semester, he was diagramming sentences. This time he “got it” because he knew what the parts were. If you don’t know what a participial phrase is, you won’t know where to put it on the diagram.
He’s in seventh grade now, and is able to write clearly and coherently. What’s more, he can edit his work and correct grammatical errors. He may never diagram sentences again, but at least he has some understanding of the idea and, I hope, not too many bad memories of the exercise.
Diagrammimg? Never heard of it. We did do sentence parsing, though, but the result wasn’t a diagram. Looking at it now, what can you do with it, now you’ve produced it?
We did Latin. ‘Nuff said. That was grammar, grammar, grammar. Made English grammar simple. …and German, French and Spanish, too.
OT !
PZ,
sources tell me there will be a Dawkins Pub Night after his talk at UM lol,I cant tell you how envious I am !!! If it had been 2 weeks later,I would actually have considered flying in for that one….
Nevermind,back to your regular programme…Never heard of diagramming,btw.
Science pundit@16: Exercise: Prove, by mathematical induction or otherwise, that (buffalo)^n can be parsed as an English sentence for each positive whole number n (allowing variation in capitalisation).
Actually, diagramming sentences is a useful exercise precisely because English is a tangled mess of a language. Trying to diagram other folks’s sentences helps you become able to fabricate more understandable sentences of your own.
In response to the various jibes at the vacuity of sentence diagramming or the overall high crap coefficient of the English language, I have to recommend Pinker’s work, especially Words and Rules, The Language Instinct, and The Stuff of Thought.
Pinker is mainly interested in how the brain acquires and generates language, a story which he tells eloquently in those three books, but along the way so much interesting material is revealed about sentence structure and English that most of the above comments come across (to me) as similar to snarky comments made by junior level javascript programmers about writing compilers or about the worth of C++.
Diagramming fads in and out of fashion in English teaching, which probably means it’s not really important for us. But I found it useful in Latin class. some of Cicero’s periodic monstrosities were impossible to understand without diagramming.
Sounds like pseudoscience for affirming preconceived opinions.
Actually, I didn’t learn sentence diagramming until I was a Peace Corps volunteer learning French in West Africa. I found it invaluable in learning foreign languages, as well as for improving written communication in English.
You gotta say this for Obama: He uses his tongue purtier than a $20 whore, as Slim Pickens says. What is more, there is actually content. Somehow, Obama just has a lot more credibility plugging literacy programs than the previous occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Ah, diagramming sentences. Good times. Good times.
PZ, it was the quadratic function that made me run back to English class and the eloquent logic of diagramming sentences. I think that would make me your total opposite.
Well, except for the god thing. We agree on that.
I think I last diagrammed a sentence in 1975, which would have been 5th grade. I had forgotten all the rules, but after reading those articles it’s all coming back like bad chili.
If you kindly ignore the fact that “me” is often used for emphasis in English. Sorta kinda like in French — and unlike German, Russian, or Latin.
Keeping this fact under the carpet has led to the amusing hypercorrectivisms like always using “I” behind “and” even when “me” would be required.
If you kindly ignore the fact that “whom” is so close to extinction that even I tend to use “who” instead, even though I don’t even have to think about when earlier generations used which, because German keeps the distinction.
Tangled mess of a language? English? Have you ever seen Latin poetry?
Even in speeches Cicero said things like “from great me fear will-you-liberate”!
Interesting. We never did it in such a way. We looked for the verb (which took up to 5 minutes…), then for the subject, and then we waited for the rest to make sense.
PZ, I hate you for making me recall suppressed memories.
Besides, what did you expect from “female Bush”?
I am one of those apparently few who loved doing sentence diagrams. And I agree wholeheartedly with Snarla–I’ve studied a number of foreign languages, and sentence diagraming helped me learn them. Of course, it may also be that the love for sentence diagraming goes hand-in-hand with the love of linguistics and languages…pleiotropy.
In these discussions, I always seem to be one of the few youngsters that knows how to diagram. My 7th and 8th grade teacher had us diagram sentences and this was in 96-97. I like diagramming, except for the really hard sentences, and I feel it improved my language skills (which were pretty good already).
Thanks to Turcano for providing the name “Reed-Kellogg diagramming”; I figured there must be a more specific name for it than “diagramming sentences”.
P.S. That X-bar diagramming mentioned by Jim really scares me.
…incorrectly. Which is fine for colloquial speech, but not for writing anything you want taken seriously.
But I was more talking about people who say things like “between you and I”.
So you only had one math class?
great thread!
It says in The Millions article:
“I’m the decider” has a single, copulative predicate.
Hmm…I didn’t know that.