Explanation, upon request:
First, I do genuinely think it's a useful skill, for English language learning specifically (can't speak to other languages), given our rules are kinda...wibbly? A lot of my students, both native speakers and ESL kids, make the same common mistakes (like mistaking a verb in a clause for the main predicate, or the direct object for the subject, or writing a phrase as a complete sentence) and having them slow down and diagram stuff like this really helps. This is super useful when they move into more complex sentence structures and unorthodox ordering. "Will looked at the snow over the balcony." and "Over the balcony, Will looked at the snow." share an identical diagram. Where is Will looking? Over the balcony. Just because 'the balcony' is the first noun in the sentence does not make it the subject. You'd be surprised how much of a shocker this is to some kids.
Second, sorry if defining all the terms seems a bit pedantic, I figured if you're anything like me you dumbed this knowledge straight out of highschool, if you had it at all.
ok so, the most basic english sentence diagram is literally just this:
We call this a Sentence Skeleton and it is the minimum requirement for a complete sentence. ...Ok technically what you actually need is the Subject (main noun) and the Predicate (main verb phrase), there are often more non-subject nouns and non-subject predicate verbs, but it's just simpler to start this way. All complete sentences have complete sentence skeletons, no matter how complicated or simple, but if one of these two is missing, something's gone wrong. "Sue left." is a complete sentence, and the correct skeleton for this example. "Left school" is not a complete sentence either (the noun there is not the subject noun, 'school left' is not the sentence we're writing). "Sue had forgotten (her latin book)" is ALSO not the correct skeleton, despite having both a subject noun and a verb phrase, because 'had forgotten' is not the subject predicate.
what about all the other stuff??
right ok. the easiest way to tell where everything else goes in a diagram is just to ask how those words relate to the sentence skeleton. Lets take our full example:
Sue left school early because she felt sick, but her mother brought her back because she had forgotten her latin book.
Yikes ok! Here's a chart, and I'll explain why things go where.
A noun being acted upon by a verb is called a Direct Object. They go on the same straight line as the main sentence skeleton, and are placed after the verb. Where did Sue leave? Sue left School. (Indirect objects gooooo Elsewhere! Under the verb! we don't have one here)
Is 'school' early? No, she left early. Early, an Adverb is describing the verb (as adverbs do) so it goes on a diagonal line below the verb it is associated with. Adjectives, the ones that describe nouns, are diagrammed in the exact same way, just under their appropriate noun word instead. Articles like 'the' are diagrammed basically identical to adjectives.
Because! Oh joy, a clause. Now we can really get into it. So, this is now what we call a Complex Sentence because we have both a main, Independent Clause (sue left (early) school) and what we call a Subordinate Clause. Subordinate Clauses can not act as full sentences on their own. "She felt sick"? Full sentence, independent clause. "Because she felt sick"? NOT a full sentence. If it has one of them clause words in front of it, it's a Subordinate Clause, so it gets stuck under the main sentence line. Now, "Because" is a little funky, it's what we call a Subordinate Conjunction, meaning it's a lil like a conjunction where we're connecting two complete independent clauses, but instead of making them equal, it makes the connected sentence a subordinate clause. This is a little different from the more common under-the-sentence phrase work I'd usually start students with which involves the more flexible prepositions, which connect phrases which do NOT have to be full Independent Clauses. (in the sentence "Sue, who ate lunch, left school." "ate lunch" is not an Independent Clause because, would you look at that, we can't complete a sentence skeleton! It only has a verb and the Direct Object. "Who" is a preposition attached to 'Sue,' so it would go under her on a solid line. ok. ANYWAY) Subordinate Conjunctions = dotted diagonal line. Prepositions = solid diagonal line (because they are not full skeletons on their own). And then those lines go right down to whatever phrase they've got which is diagrammed accordingly. They've done a disservice by connecting these dotted lines to the middle of the phrases all sloppy like but here's a cleaner version
Subordinate Clauses and Phrases are connected to the main sentence structure under whatever word they're attached to just like our adjectives/adverbs. (In fact, if you noticed Prepositional phrases are diagrammed similar to adjectives/adverbs, you're correct! they're both expanding on a word or phrase in the main clause, just, one is a full phrase and the other is a word. 'John, who is green, writes books.' and 'Green John writes books' tells us the same extra thing about John (he's green), so that information is diagrammed in the same place (under John with a solid line). one just has some extra steps if that makes sense. And it's worth pointing out that if "Green John" was a proper noun both words would go up in the Subject spot. In this case it's being used as an adjective tho. I'm digressing again.)
ok alright. Because she felt si- what is THAT.
alright don't freak out. Sometimes the noun connected to the skeleton after the verb is NOT a Direct Object. What??? Yeah I know. Backslashes are for Predicate Adjectives which is panic inducing till you realize they're literally what they say on the tin: an adjective. In the Predicate. Wow. A Direct Object is something that is being acted upon by a transitive verb, a verb that is doing something. Sue left (transitive), so the place she left, 'school,' is a noun that is not describing Sue or her leaving (crucial). Certain verbs, called Linking Verbs, do not have Direct Objects and instead link (aha) the adjective, as a part of the Predicate clause, back to the subject. We use a backslash to indicate that, instead of having a DO and being a Separate Thing, our Predicate Adjective is reaching over the verb and back towards the subject.
BUT!!! A proper Conjunction??? From the Junction??? Wow a celebrity! Ok, did a little research and apparently the under-the-first-clause diagramming is an accepted strategy nowadays, but when I was a tyke, the idea was a conjunction combines two complete, equal sentences. This makes the sentence a Compound Sentence (there's two (or more) of them!) and they were diagrammed as such.
So the rest of this is pretty self explanatory. This is a Compound Complex Sentence, with two complete sentences and one 'because' subclause each. Note the 'had forgotten' is the full predicate of that last phrase, helper verbs get to sit pretty with their main partners, so they're in the same spot. Also note, despite being connected in front of the first 'because' phrase, I know the original sentence was 'Sue left school early because she felt sick, but her mother brought her back because she had forgotten her Latin book" and not, perhaps "Sue left school early, but her mother brought her back because she had forgotten her Latin book because she felt sick." because... 1 girl ur successive becauses. obviously. and more importantly 2!! that first because clause is attached to the First Sentence, not the second one. Attaching it to the second full sentence changes the meaning (she forgot her book because she was sick, now. that was not implied before even if it's a reasonable assumption!) and it would, obviously, be diagrammed differently. (this kind of split between the two complete sentences would be easier to see if the 'but' and second sentence was diagrammed out straight to the right, the way I was taught, but oh well.)
ok one more thing. I do want to say this diagram misses my absolute favorite bit of diagramming which is conjunctions between subjects or predicates.
So sometimes we combine two sentences and we notice we can be more efficient about it. Lets say. Sam hunted. and Dean hunted. It is grammatically correct to say "Sam hunted and Dean hunted." (two independent clauses combined by a conjunction) buuuut that's a little clunky. They're both hunting! So we say ok fine. We can say "Sam and Dean hunted." wooooah! neat! But how does that work on the diagram? do we have to separate it out again? NO. We get a ✨SPACESHIP✨
^ thing that actually made me do my english exercises when i was 10 (explosions and astronaut doodles not included)
And you can have as many lines in the space ship, or as many space ships, as you need. "Sam, Dean, and Cas hunted." (spaceship gets three lines) "Sam, Dean, and Cas hunted and ate pie." (spaceship has three lines and connects to ANOTHER SPACESHIP which has two predicates) so on and so forth. Any phrases connected to particular subject would be diagrammed under the subject. "Sam and his older brother Dean hunted." 'his older brother' would all be diagrammed as appropriate under Dean's line specifically, they are not describing Sam!
Listen all I'm saying is, all those posts about English grammar being bs? Wouldn't you like a map?
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