Remember sentence diagramming? (Do they teach it anymore?)
On the standard system that was taught in grade school at least until fifteen years or so ago, how do you analyze the following two sentences?
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I made them aware of what you said.
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We’re going to talk about why you did that.
I’m specifically interested in what to do with “of what you said” and “about why you did that.”
I can’t find a website that lets you actually input sentence diagrams in some way, so I know this might be a hard question to answer. Figgered I’d try.
“of what you said” is a prepositional phrase, probably an adverbial phrase modifying the objective complement (and adjective) “aware.”
“what you said” is a noun clause, and the object of the preposition “of”
“about why you did that” is a prepositional phrase, probably an adverbial phrase telling why you are going to talk, probably modifying the infinitive “to talk”
“why you did that” is a noun clause, and the object of the preposition “about”
I have an image of how to diagram them, but I don’t know how to show it here.
Both are prepositional clauses.
IIRC Seems like we diagrammed as a branch off the tree. Subject/verb were the other branches.
The object of the prep is identified in the diagram too.
So could you maybe diagram it just by having the diagonal preposition line attached to a horizontal line on which you diagram the clause itself as though it were a sentence?
“of what you said” being diagrammed with the “of” coming diagonally off of “aware” and then attached to the “of” line a horizontal line upon which you diagram “you said what” as though it were a sentence of its own? (You–long vertical line–said–short vertical line–what)
A website devoted to diagramming sentences. Brings back memories of junior high school English. There are several links for prepositional phrases.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/diagrams2/diagrams_frames.htm
Yeah, I’d seen that one. Unfortunately it doesn’t have any examples like the ones I mentioned–cases in which the preposition governs an entire clause. “About what you said,” “of John going too far,” “around why you did that,” and so on.
If I recall correctly, clauses are elevated on a stilt. So, in the example of “about that,” you’d diagram the “about” as a preposition angling down, then “that” on a horizontal line parallell to the main sentence structure.
In the example of “about what you said,” the “about” angles down, then the horizontal line parallel to the main sentence structure. Then you have “what you said” placed on a stilt, going upward from the preposition’s object line, and at the top of the stilt there would be a horizontal line between and parallel to the prepositional object and main sentence where you would diagram “what you said” in positive form SVO order, i.e. “you said what.”
At least, that’s what I’m recalling.
I learned to diagram sentences (we called it parsing) in 8th grade, which would have been in '97-'98. The method we used was slightly different than the one at the site linked above IIRC, but very similar. I remember occasionally having to parse sentences in high school, not really for credit but more of an in-class excercise (“Wow class, just look at the horribly long sentence Dickens has written here. How about if everyone takes out a piece of paper and diagrams it! <groans>”).
The last time I tried to post a parsing diagram, the editor made a hash
of it because it ignored most of the spaces which were crucial to the
layout of the diagram. Therefore I present these as lines of
generation. The horizontal arrows should be drawn diagonally or
vertically to make the standard “coathanger diagrams”. Here S stands
for sentence, NP for noun phrase, VP for verb phrase and so on. Much
more detail could be added involving number and case of nouns and tense
of verbs, but I keep it simple.
I made them aware of what you said
S --> NP VP
NP --> Pron --> “I”
VP --> V Obj VP (the verb “made” is taking as complement both an
object NP and a VP)
V --> “made”
Obj --> Pron_ob --> “them”
VP --> V PP
V --> “aware”
PP --> Prep S
Prep --> “of”
S --> Rel NP VP
Rel --> “what”
NP --> Pron --> “you”
VP --> V --> "said
We’re going to talk about why you did that.
In this one, I am going to ignore the contraction. That is essentially
a rule of phonics.
S --> NP VP
NP --> Pron --> “we”
VP --> Aux V VP
Aux --> “are”
V --> “going”
VP --> IP --> “to” V PP (IP = infinitive phrase)
V --> “talk”
PP --> Prep Complement
Prep --> “about” (alternately you could treat “talk about” as a complex
verb)
Complement --> Rel S
Rel --> “why”
S --> NP VP
NP --> Pron --> “you”
VP --> V NP
V --> “did”
NP --> Pron --> “that”
Both sentences are complex with an embedded clause inside an embedded
clause.