[grammar] Sentence analysis: "I think that nuclear power is safe."

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

http://fallibleideas.com/grammar (part 4):

> For these practice sentences, first mark clauses and phrases (using curly and angle brackets), then make a short outline, then write and answer a question for each word.
>
> · I think that nuclear power is safe.

Version with clauses and phrases marked: I think that {<nuclear power> is safe}.

Short outline: I think that [subordinate clause].

The word "that" can be regarded as a subordinating conjunction that links the main sentence to the subordinate clause.

Main sentence:

- What is the main action of the sentence? Think.

- Who thinks? I.

- What do I think? [Subordinate clause].

Subordinate clause:

- What is the main action of the subordinate clause? Is.

- What is the subject of the subordinate clause? Power.

- What kind of power? Nuclear.

- What is nuclear power? Safe.

[Elliot Temple]

On Jul 1, 2020, at 9:48 PM, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> http://fallibleideas.com/grammar (part 4):
>
>> For these practice sentences, first mark clauses and phrases (using curly and angle brackets), then make a short outline, then write and answer a question for each word.
>>
>> · I think that nuclear power is safe.
>
> Version with clauses and phrases marked: I think that {<nuclear power> is safe}.

How many clauses does this sentence have?

>
> Short outline: I think that [subordinate clause].
>
> The word "that" can be regarded as a subordinating conjunction that links the main sentence to the subordinate clause.

That’s one option (though you’d need a relative pronoun, not a standard conjunction, unless you claimed that “think” had no object), though in this case I prefer viewing the sentence as meaning this:

> Nuclear power is safe; I think that.


the “that” has two roles. First, it’s a pronoun (object of think) and second it’s introducing a clause (like the semi-colon allows a second clause).

> Main sentence:
>
> - What is the main action of the sentence? Think.
>
> - Who thinks? I.
>
> - What do I think? [Subordinate clause].
>
> Subordinate clause:
>
> - What is the main action of the subordinate clause? Is.
>
> - What is the subject of the subordinate clause? Power.
>
> - What kind of power? Nuclear.
>
> - What is nuclear power? Safe.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 12:55 AM Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> On Jul 1, 2020, at 9:48 PM, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Version with clauses and phrases marked: I think that {<nuclear power> is safe}.

> How many clauses does this sentence have?

Two.

Corrected version with both clauses marked: {I think} that {<nuclear power> is safe}.

That was a helpful question. A similar question (also from Elliot) helped me notice a mistake I made with clauses a few days ago [1].

To help with this specific problem, I'm going to add "How many clauses does the sentence have?" explicitly as step 0 when I analyze sentences (before step 1 of finding the verb).

A more general problem is this: I made a second mistake with clauses even after having written a postmortem for an earlier mistake with clauses a few days ago [2]. That was incompetent. I guess there must be something wrong with the way I think about postmortems or mistakes or learning. I don't know what it is yet, but I guess it led to the repeat mistake.

[1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fallible-ideas/VYpRwJLiGKY/rawa44rQAQAJ

[2] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fallible-ideas/VYpRwJLiGKY/W4NfL1pxAgAJ