[draft] grammar part 4
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Elliot Temple
May 30, 2019, 2:24:24 PM5/30/19
to FIGG, FIYG
please give feedback on the draft, particularly about anything that’s confusing.
## Part 4: Sentence Outlining and Question-Based Analysis
This part covers two techniques to help you understand sentences.
### Sentence Outlining
When analyzing long sentences, it helps to look at shortened versions. A sentence outline only includes the *essentials*, so you can understand the sentence while having fewer things to worry about. Outlines also usually replace references with what they refer to, e.g. replacing “he” with “John”.
Outlining also uses *symbols* to make it easier to understand the sentence. *Square brackets* indicate a paraphrase or modification, like normal. Use *parentheses to show clause groupings* and *angle brackets to show phrase groupings*.
It’s up to you to decide what type of outlining is useful. You can shorten a sentence, add grouping symbols, or both.
What’s essential? Verb, subject, object, complement.
What’s inessential? Most modifiers. But sometimes a modifier, like “not”, is too important to leave out. You have to use your judgment.
What about conjunctions? When a conjunction joins two clauses, keep both clauses in the outline by default. You can leave a clause out if you judge it’s an inessential detail.
When a conjunction joins phrases, you can paraphrase the group. “Joe and Sue” can be outlined as “[People]”. You can also outline it as “[Joe]” while figuring out what the sentence means, then apply it to Sue, too, at the end. For more complicated groups, you can sometimes outline them as “[stuff]”, figure out what the sentence means, then apply the meaning to the actual stuff.
In general, feel free to leave things out and analyze a simpler version of a sentence. That makes it easier to get started. Once you understand a version of the sentence, you can add the other parts back in one at a time. You can outline a clause as “[part 2]” and ignore it until later (this makes sense when it’s important, so you don’t want to leave it out, but you want to focus on understanding part 1 first). You can also outline a clause as “[part 1]” after you understand it, so it’s easier to focus on part 2.
Outlining can be done at various levels of detail for various purposes. When you treat “red ball” as “ball” you’re using an outline (summary, paraphrase, short version) of a phrase. Outlining each phrase in a clause makes that clause into an outline. Outlining each clause in a sentence makes that sentence into an outline. Similarly, you can get an outline of a paragraph by outlining each sentence inside the paragraph. When outlining a paragraph, you’ll find some clauses (and even whole sentences) are inessential to the paragraph’s meaning, so you can leave them out even though you would have kept them when outlining an individual sentence. The higher level thing you’re outlining, the more detail you’ll leave out. Outlining paragraphs helps you see a short version of them and understand their meaning as a whole. Paragraph outlines also make it easier to think about multiple paragraphs at once so you can understand the meaning of that group of paragraphs.
*Tip:* As a writer, try to write text which is easy to outline. The fewer changes are required to get a nice outline (at any detail level), the easier to read and understand the text is. It helps if you minimize how much you put groups inside other groups. A phrase inside a phrase is fine, but a phrase inside a phrase inside a phrase is generally a bad idea.
#### Outlining Examples
> John quickly threw the large, dark red ball after he ate a large lunch.
None of the modifiers seem especially important, so the outline is:
> (John threw ball) after ([John] ate lunch).
Clauses can often be reduced to two or three words (verb, subject, and object or complement). That’s because a phrase with a main word plus modifiers can usually be outlined as just the main word.
Marking the clauses with parentheses makes it easier to see how the sentence is organized. Here’s another way to outline it which focuses on the organization but not the meaning:
> [main clause] after [subordinate clause].
Marking clauses and phrases in the full sentence can also be helpful for seeing the organization:
> (John <quickly threw> <the large, <dark red> ball>) after (he ate <a large lunch>).
The adjective phrase “dark red” is nested inside the noun phrase “the large, dark red ball”. It’s just one more modifier for ball, not a separate thing. Note that “dark” is an adverb which modifies “red”, it doesn’t modify “ball”. If everything modified “ball”, there wouldn’t be a phrase nested inside a phrase.
Ignoring nested phrases, each clause normally has two or three phrases: a verb, a subject, and an optional object or complement. They fit the standard sentence pattern from part 1.
Sometimes clauses have more than three phrases because a modifier isn’t next to what it modifies or because it modifies the whole clause. When something is split from its modifier, you can move the modifier to get a nicer outline.
> I hit the ball with the sticker fast.
Here, “fast” is an adverb which modifies “hit”. If you mark the phrases (including one-word phrases for extra clarity), you’ll find four non-nested phrases:
> <I> <hit> <the ball <with the sticker>> <fast>.
There’s a verb, subject, object and an extra phrase. Extra phrases are OK, but for outlining purposes you can rearrange the words:
> <I> <hit fast> <the ball <with the sticker>>.
With this word order, there are no extra phrase. We can clearly see that the sentence has the usual three parts. There isn’t really a fourth part.
The phrase “with the sticker” is part of a larger phrase, “the ball with the sticker”, which functions as a noun. Due to being inside the noun phrase which is the object, it doesn’t add an additional top level phrase to the sentence. It’s a modifier which modifies the object; it’s not a separate thing.
You can also rearrange clauses as convenient. Consider “After I ate my lunch, I threw a ball.”. You can outline it as, “(I threw ball) after (I ate lunch)”. It’s often more intuitive and clear to begin with the main point from the main clause.
### Question-Based Analysis
You can ask a series of questions, one answered by each word in a sentence, to help figure out what the sentence means. For each clause, ask the questions in the usual order (verb, subject, object or complement, modifiers).
The point is to figure out what the main piece of information provided by each word is. Many words (all verbs and most nouns) also provide secondary information. You can ask additional, secondary questions when you find it useful.
The main information provided by the verb “learned” is the learning action. It also provides secondary information about when the action happened (in the past).
The main information provided by the noun “cats” is the type of thing (a cat). It also provides secondary information about how many cats (more than one). Most nouns have singular and plural forms.
Answers to questions are commonly partial, not complete. E.g. the word “big” answers the question “What size?” but it gives only a partial answer. It gives some information about size, but not the exact size.
Every word you read is a clue (or hint) about what the writer means. It’s your job to put all the clues together to guess the meaning. Going through a sentence with a series of questions will create a list of each piece of information that the sentence gives you. Every word has a purpose (unless the writer made a mistake), so don’t ignore words. Don’t guess a meaning for a sentence which contradicts even one clue (word).
The best way to explain how to do the questions is with an example.
#### Example Question-Based Analysis
> John quickly threw the large, dark red ball after he ate a large lunch.
What action happened? Threw. (An optional second question is “When did the throwing happen?”. The answer is in the past.)
Who threw? John. (The more generic question for subjects is “What does the action?”, which is also fine to use.)
What was thrown? Ball. (The more generic question for objects is “What is acted on?”, which is also fine to use.)
How was the throwing performed? Quickly.
What color was the ball? Red.
What type of red? Dark.
What size was the ball? Large.
Which ball? The. (That means it’s a definite (particular) ball, rather than any ball. The ball would normally have been specified in a previous sentence.)
When was the throwing? After. (An alternative way to deal with conjunctions is to ask “What else happened?”, ask questions for the second clause, then ask “How are the two actions linked?”)
After what action happened? Ate.
Who ate? He = John. (It’s good to say what references refer to. You could also ask a second question like “Who is he?”)
What was eaten? Lunch.
What size lunch? Large.
Which lunch? A. (It’s an indefinite (unspecified) lunch, not a definite lunch.)
We’ve now identified the main purpose of each word in the sentence. This helped us think it through and provides a list we can refer to. Without doing this, we might misunderstand a word without even realizing there was a problem.
*Tip:* It’s best to phrase questions so they don’t have a yes-or-no answer. Questions like “Was lunch the thing that was eaten?” or “Was the size of the lunch large?” are not recommended.
### Conclusion of Part 4
Every word in a sentence provides information. It’s useful to know the purpose and meaning of each word. You can review this as a series of questions and answers.
Besides having individual meanings, words are organized into groups. Outlining helps us see and understanding those groupings.
Outlining also helps us consider what’s essential (important) or inessential (minor detail) at a particular level of detail or for a particular purpose. (If your goal is to learn about how rockets get into orbit, you can mostly ignore off-topic text). The essential ideas make a short outline, and shortening lets us think about more at once.
For these practice sentences, first mark clauses and phrases (using parentheses and angle brackets), then make a short outline, then write and answer a question for each word. You may need to do some online research to figure them out, especially for the last one.
- John pet his dog and cat with vigor.
- Seeing isn’t believing.
- I like philosophy because it involves thinking methods.
- Some people don’t love truth or honesty.
- I think that nuclear power is safe.
- John and Olivia enthusiastically sang their favorite song on the stage, but singing well wasn’t enough for the actors pretending to be judges.
- While you’re having a discussion, never misquote anyone.
## Part 4: Sentence Outlining and Question-Based Analysis
This part covers two techniques to help you understand sentences.
### Sentence Outlining
When analyzing long sentences, it helps to look at shortened versions. A sentence outline only includes the *essentials*, so you can understand the sentence while having fewer things to worry about. Outlines also usually replace references with what they refer to, e.g. replacing “he” with “John”.
Outlining also uses *symbols* to make it easier to understand the sentence. *Square brackets* indicate a paraphrase or modification, like normal. Use *parentheses to show clause groupings* and *angle brackets to show phrase groupings*.
It’s up to you to decide what type of outlining is useful. You can shorten a sentence, add grouping symbols, or both.
What’s essential? Verb, subject, object, complement.
What’s inessential? Most modifiers. But sometimes a modifier, like “not”, is too important to leave out. You have to use your judgment.
What about conjunctions? When a conjunction joins two clauses, keep both clauses in the outline by default. You can leave a clause out if you judge it’s an inessential detail.
When a conjunction joins phrases, you can paraphrase the group. “Joe and Sue” can be outlined as “[People]”. You can also outline it as “[Joe]” while figuring out what the sentence means, then apply it to Sue, too, at the end. For more complicated groups, you can sometimes outline them as “[stuff]”, figure out what the sentence means, then apply the meaning to the actual stuff.
In general, feel free to leave things out and analyze a simpler version of a sentence. That makes it easier to get started. Once you understand a version of the sentence, you can add the other parts back in one at a time. You can outline a clause as “[part 2]” and ignore it until later (this makes sense when it’s important, so you don’t want to leave it out, but you want to focus on understanding part 1 first). You can also outline a clause as “[part 1]” after you understand it, so it’s easier to focus on part 2.
Outlining can be done at various levels of detail for various purposes. When you treat “red ball” as “ball” you’re using an outline (summary, paraphrase, short version) of a phrase. Outlining each phrase in a clause makes that clause into an outline. Outlining each clause in a sentence makes that sentence into an outline. Similarly, you can get an outline of a paragraph by outlining each sentence inside the paragraph. When outlining a paragraph, you’ll find some clauses (and even whole sentences) are inessential to the paragraph’s meaning, so you can leave them out even though you would have kept them when outlining an individual sentence. The higher level thing you’re outlining, the more detail you’ll leave out. Outlining paragraphs helps you see a short version of them and understand their meaning as a whole. Paragraph outlines also make it easier to think about multiple paragraphs at once so you can understand the meaning of that group of paragraphs.
*Tip:* As a writer, try to write text which is easy to outline. The fewer changes are required to get a nice outline (at any detail level), the easier to read and understand the text is. It helps if you minimize how much you put groups inside other groups. A phrase inside a phrase is fine, but a phrase inside a phrase inside a phrase is generally a bad idea.
#### Outlining Examples
> John quickly threw the large, dark red ball after he ate a large lunch.
None of the modifiers seem especially important, so the outline is:
> (John threw ball) after ([John] ate lunch).
Clauses can often be reduced to two or three words (verb, subject, and object or complement). That’s because a phrase with a main word plus modifiers can usually be outlined as just the main word.
Marking the clauses with parentheses makes it easier to see how the sentence is organized. Here’s another way to outline it which focuses on the organization but not the meaning:
> [main clause] after [subordinate clause].
Marking clauses and phrases in the full sentence can also be helpful for seeing the organization:
> (John <quickly threw> <the large, <dark red> ball>) after (he ate <a large lunch>).
The adjective phrase “dark red” is nested inside the noun phrase “the large, dark red ball”. It’s just one more modifier for ball, not a separate thing. Note that “dark” is an adverb which modifies “red”, it doesn’t modify “ball”. If everything modified “ball”, there wouldn’t be a phrase nested inside a phrase.
Ignoring nested phrases, each clause normally has two or three phrases: a verb, a subject, and an optional object or complement. They fit the standard sentence pattern from part 1.
Sometimes clauses have more than three phrases because a modifier isn’t next to what it modifies or because it modifies the whole clause. When something is split from its modifier, you can move the modifier to get a nicer outline.
> I hit the ball with the sticker fast.
Here, “fast” is an adverb which modifies “hit”. If you mark the phrases (including one-word phrases for extra clarity), you’ll find four non-nested phrases:
> <I> <hit> <the ball <with the sticker>> <fast>.
There’s a verb, subject, object and an extra phrase. Extra phrases are OK, but for outlining purposes you can rearrange the words:
> <I> <hit fast> <the ball <with the sticker>>.
With this word order, there are no extra phrase. We can clearly see that the sentence has the usual three parts. There isn’t really a fourth part.
The phrase “with the sticker” is part of a larger phrase, “the ball with the sticker”, which functions as a noun. Due to being inside the noun phrase which is the object, it doesn’t add an additional top level phrase to the sentence. It’s a modifier which modifies the object; it’s not a separate thing.
You can also rearrange clauses as convenient. Consider “After I ate my lunch, I threw a ball.”. You can outline it as, “(I threw ball) after (I ate lunch)”. It’s often more intuitive and clear to begin with the main point from the main clause.
### Question-Based Analysis
You can ask a series of questions, one answered by each word in a sentence, to help figure out what the sentence means. For each clause, ask the questions in the usual order (verb, subject, object or complement, modifiers).
The point is to figure out what the main piece of information provided by each word is. Many words (all verbs and most nouns) also provide secondary information. You can ask additional, secondary questions when you find it useful.
The main information provided by the verb “learned” is the learning action. It also provides secondary information about when the action happened (in the past).
The main information provided by the noun “cats” is the type of thing (a cat). It also provides secondary information about how many cats (more than one). Most nouns have singular and plural forms.
Answers to questions are commonly partial, not complete. E.g. the word “big” answers the question “What size?” but it gives only a partial answer. It gives some information about size, but not the exact size.
Every word you read is a clue (or hint) about what the writer means. It’s your job to put all the clues together to guess the meaning. Going through a sentence with a series of questions will create a list of each piece of information that the sentence gives you. Every word has a purpose (unless the writer made a mistake), so don’t ignore words. Don’t guess a meaning for a sentence which contradicts even one clue (word).
The best way to explain how to do the questions is with an example.
#### Example Question-Based Analysis
> John quickly threw the large, dark red ball after he ate a large lunch.
What action happened? Threw. (An optional second question is “When did the throwing happen?”. The answer is in the past.)
Who threw? John. (The more generic question for subjects is “What does the action?”, which is also fine to use.)
What was thrown? Ball. (The more generic question for objects is “What is acted on?”, which is also fine to use.)
How was the throwing performed? Quickly.
What color was the ball? Red.
What type of red? Dark.
What size was the ball? Large.
Which ball? The. (That means it’s a definite (particular) ball, rather than any ball. The ball would normally have been specified in a previous sentence.)
When was the throwing? After. (An alternative way to deal with conjunctions is to ask “What else happened?”, ask questions for the second clause, then ask “How are the two actions linked?”)
After what action happened? Ate.
Who ate? He = John. (It’s good to say what references refer to. You could also ask a second question like “Who is he?”)
What was eaten? Lunch.
What size lunch? Large.
Which lunch? A. (It’s an indefinite (unspecified) lunch, not a definite lunch.)
We’ve now identified the main purpose of each word in the sentence. This helped us think it through and provides a list we can refer to. Without doing this, we might misunderstand a word without even realizing there was a problem.
*Tip:* It’s best to phrase questions so they don’t have a yes-or-no answer. Questions like “Was lunch the thing that was eaten?” or “Was the size of the lunch large?” are not recommended.
### Conclusion of Part 4
Every word in a sentence provides information. It’s useful to know the purpose and meaning of each word. You can review this as a series of questions and answers.
Besides having individual meanings, words are organized into groups. Outlining helps us see and understanding those groupings.
Outlining also helps us consider what’s essential (important) or inessential (minor detail) at a particular level of detail or for a particular purpose. (If your goal is to learn about how rockets get into orbit, you can mostly ignore off-topic text). The essential ideas make a short outline, and shortening lets us think about more at once.
For these practice sentences, first mark clauses and phrases (using parentheses and angle brackets), then make a short outline, then write and answer a question for each word. You may need to do some online research to figure them out, especially for the last one.
- John pet his dog and cat with vigor.
- Seeing isn’t believing.
- I like philosophy because it involves thinking methods.
- Some people don’t love truth or honesty.
- I think that nuclear power is safe.
- John and Olivia enthusiastically sang their favorite song on the stage, but singing well wasn’t enough for the actors pretending to be judges.
- While you’re having a discussion, never misquote anyone.
Justin Mallone
Jun 2, 2019, 12:51:29 PM6/2/19
to fallibl...@googlegroups.com, FIYG
On May 30, 2019, at 2:24:20 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
> please give feedback on the draft, particularly about anything that’s confusing.
>
>
>
> ## Part 4: Sentence Outlining and Question-Based Analysis
>
> This part covers two techniques to help you understand sentences.
>
> ### Sentence Outlining
[…]
> please give feedback on the draft, particularly about anything that’s confusing.
>
>
>
> ## Part 4: Sentence Outlining and Question-Based Analysis
>
> This part covers two techniques to help you understand sentences.
>
> ### Sentence Outlining
> What about conjunctions? When a conjunction joins two clauses, keep both clauses in the outline by default. You can leave a clause out if you judge it’s an inessential detail.
For something like...
"Justin ate ice cream and curi ate pie."
…when doing my own analysis, I’ve been breaking them up into two sentences and leaving out the conjunction
S-V-DO
Justin | ate | <ice cream>
curi | ate | pie
Since the independent clauses were the same sentence type, I just showed them both under “S-V-DO." If the sentence type changes for the independent clause, I’ll note that. So e.g. for “Justin ate ice cream and curi pondered.” I’d do:
S-V-DO
Justin | ate | <ice cream>
S-V
curi | pondered
-JM
anonymous FI
Jun 2, 2019, 2:27:06 PM6/2/19
to fallibl...@googlegroups.com, FIYG
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