Grammar nerds: sentence diagramming?

[SimonDoom]

Did you learn sentence diagramming in school?

I did, and for some reason I always liked it. It helped make sense of the structure of sentences and the parts of speech. It made grammar seem less random.

I don't know if it's still taught in schools. I don't think my kids learned it when they were in school. I wonder if it has just disappeared in schools now. For those of you who are younger (born after 1980), did you learn it in school?

 

[Erozetta]

'83 and yes, it was taught in my schools in Ohio, but not at my school in Alabama.

 

[CalBishForNow]

Born after 1980 is younger? Doing the math on that might be depressing.

Sorry, couldn't resist that. As for the actual question, yes, I was born after 1980, although not by too much, and yes, I learned sentence diagramming in school.

I wouldn't say I enjoy it much, though. It's at best a mechanical approach to language. That's the kind of thing AI is good for, apologies for bringing up another contentious topic around here. Naturalistic dialogue is un-diagrammable. Wordplay is orthogonal to being diagrammed.

 

[TheRedLantern]

I did (Millennial from the USA).

We spent maybe a week on it in middle school and never again. In hindsight, now that @SimonDoom is asking this question, it was one of the more useful things I learned about English. It showed me exactly how to think about the structure of English sentences, phrases, and clauses. Disassembling and reassembling English sentences is 80% of my prose revision process

 

[cw5523729]

Born in 77 and I don't think I've ever heard of it. I just googled it and it doesn't look familiar.

Or it's just been way too many years since I was in school and I forgot. That's equally likely.

 

[SimonDoom]

For those who may be confused about what I'm talking about, here's a reference sheet for sentence diagramming:

 

[StillStunned]

I was talking to my wife about it just yesterday, and how I spent hours and hours doing it at school and then never again. Probably once it's imprinted on your brain you don't need to think about it anymore.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

New York in the 70s and 80s did a very minimal amount with it, like less'n a week throughout all junior & senior high. Didn't in college. A foreign national I know taking English is currently doing a very advanced version of it in undergrad.

 

[cw5523729]

For those who may be confused about what I'm talking about, here's a reference sheet for sentence diagramming:


View attachment 2577323

Is this like that "new math" that I kept hearing about?

 

[Areala-chan]

I remember doing this in English classes all through grade school, with the diagramming getting increasingly more complex as we went along. I remember thinking it was amusing, ripping sentences apart and making all the little lines on my paper then filling them in, but I don't remember it helping or hindering my written language acquisition any. Maybe that's a sign that it really did help? English was the only language class where we did this though; it was never done in my Spanish, French, or Japanese classes.

 

[SimonDoom]

Is this like that "new math" that I kept hearing about?

Not exactly. Sentence diagramming began a long, long time ago, and it was popular for much of the 20th century, despite uncertain data about its usefulness.

I'm a visual person and my favorite field of mathematics is geometry, so diagramming works for me. I'm not sure it works for others.

 

[CalBishForNow]

English was the only language class where we did this though; it was never done in my Spanish, French, or Japanese classes.

On the one hand, I wouldn't be surprised if classes in/for your local language were taught differently than classes for second languages. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if this is an oddity of English. Fun factoid, spelling bees are only a phenomenon in the English-speaking world, because most other languages have such consistent spelling rules that there's no point. English is three or four languages mashed together and borrowing liberally from all the rest. So maybe diagramming sentences are also only needed (or possible) in English.

EDIT: Argh! Talk about English grammar complications: "maybe diagramming sentences is only needed..."

I can speak French well enough to say that diagramming a sentence in that language should be possible, and there are so many homophones/homonyms that it might actually be more useful there than in English, but I've never seen it done.

 

[Writer61]

I was born well before 1980, in the UK, and never saw anything like that.

 

[cw5523729]

and it was popular for much of the 20th century

Thank you for making the 20th century sound like ancient Rome. I didn't feel old enough already.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

English is three or four languages mashed together and borrowing liberally from all the rest.

Actually it's eight: Brythonic, Celtic, Pictish, Jute, Angle, Saxon, Viking Norse and Norman French. Then, as you say, renaissance and enlightenment 'loan words' from across Europe, the Empire and the wider world and, finally, the modern tendency for mutilated local versions of English used in the former Colonies and the Commonwealth to be recycled back into the Mother tongue.

I was born well before 1980, in the UK, and never saw anything like that.

Neither have I, nor my retired English teaching mother, with whom I've just checked. We just listened, learned, used and were corrected when we went astray.

 

[Writer61]

Actually it's eight: Brythonic, Celtic, Pictish, Jute, Angle, Saxon, Viking Norse and Norman French. Then, as you say, renaissance and enlightenment 'loan words' from across the Empire and the wider world and, finally, the modern tendency for mutilated local versions of English used in the former Colonies and the Commonwealth to be recycled into the Mother tongue.

The mongrel heritage of English is something that I find helpful when trying to make sense of other languages.

Neither have I, nor my retired English teaching mother, with whom I've just checked. We just listened, learned, used and were corrected when we went astray.

Phew, thought I had not been paying attention in class.

 

[crookedletter]

For those who may be confused about what I'm talking about, here's a reference sheet for sentence diagramming:


View attachment 2577323

I was prepared to say yes, until I saw this. We never did anything this intense. But a more basic version of breaking sentences down into subject, verb, predicates, clauses, etc., yes.

And thank you for, by your cutoff year, including me in the "younger" crowd. If only barely. An unexpected upside of hanging out on AH is to occasionally be made to feel young.

 

[ronde]

My high school English teacher had two passions in life - sentence diagramming and orthography, so I had more than my fair share. I don't remember much of either.

 

[yowser]

I suspect (but do not know) that this is a more significant tool for relatively non-inflected languages like English, where word order becomes more significant and you lose the suffix signposts that keep things tidy otherwise.

 

[MrPixel]

7th grade, in 1966, and never saw it thereafter. Mrs. Caldwell was an enjoyable experience, fiery-red beehive hairdo and all.

Sentence diagramming was fun for me, and was my intro to computer-related flowcharting.

 

[THBGato]

Did you learn sentence diagramming in school?

I did, and for some reason I always liked it. It helped make sense of the structure of sentences and the parts of speech. It made grammar seem less random.

I learnt it in the 1990s... but for Latin. Never learnt it for English.

My kids have to do it now in the Spanish system - análisis morfología. They aren't keen.

 

[nice90sguy]

the point see personally diagramming i dont sentences of.

 

[NuclearFairy]

I don't think I ever did, but then as a child they were more focused an helping me read the actual words. Which sucks cause I really did enjoy grammar.

My kids though, going to school right now are learning it.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

An advanced version being used overseas. Note there are errors, but mostly correct.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

We did sentence analysis in my old-fashioned primary schools, and some has made a comeback for current teenagers and young adults, but we never did the actual diagrams in English in UK schools - they seem to be an American thing. Though the Little Town on the Prairie scene seems to simply group words as a 'diagram':

she diagrammed sentences on her slate and rapidly parsed them.
Scaling yonder peak, I saw an eagle
Wheeling near its brow.

“ ‘I’ is the personal pronoun, first person singular, here used as the subject of the verb ‘saw,’ past tense of the transitive verb ‘to see.’ ‘Saw’ takes as its object the common generic noun, ‘eagle,’ modified by the singular article, ‘an.’

“ ‘Scaling yonder peak’ is a participial phrase, adjunct of the pronoun, ‘I,’ hence adjectival. ‘Wheeling’ is the present participle of the intransitive verb, ‘to wheel,’ here used as adjunct to the noun, ‘eagle,’ hence adjectival. ‘Near its brow’ is a prepositional phrase, adjunct of the present participle of the verb ‘to wheel,’ hence adverbial.”

(search the link for the diagram)