Hi John,
since different languages have different sentence structures, syntactic diagrams can be useful, indeed. Understanding functions of the sentence parts can help us, learners of foreign languages, to use the correct word order, which is often quite different from what we know from our native languages.
Also, there are various types of syntactic diagrams, depending on the particular linguistic tradition or "school". I won't bother you with that, but I could give you an example.
In Czech, as it's a flectional language, the word order is rather free. Of course, there are semantic nuances that can be simulated by specific word order patterns if you want to be understood precisely and cannot use any prosodic features (like intonation and stress), which is in written text, for instance.
Let's abandon factual information and look at the following sentece:
"The tower in Babel was found by people three years ago."
It is important to know what sentece parts are, what their functions are and what their place in the sentence should be.
If you look at the Czech translation, you'll see that this migh be less relevant:
"Věž v Babyloně byla nalezena lidmi před třemi lety."
"Lidmi byla nalezena před třemi lety věž v Babyloně."
"Před třemi lety byla nalezena lidmi věž v Babyloně."
etc.
This can happen because the syntactic functions are expressed by means of declension - Czech has seven cases, so it's clear which part is the subject (nominative), the direct object (accusative), the indirect object (dative), the agent (instrumental), the adverbial of place or time (locative) etc.
English, having no (or very very little - just remains of) declension, needs to express the syntactic functions by means of the well-known basic word order (for the most usual statements): SVOMPT (subject, predicate, object, manner, place, time). Only a few "deviations" are possible and their use is restricted to specific (both syntactic and semantic) contexts (aren't they?).
Let's repeat the example sentence:
A: "The tower in Babel was found by people three years ago."
(I'm not using the well-known collocation "The Tower of Babel", since I'd like to show what can happen to the non-native speakers of foreign languages.)
Let's restructure it:
B: "The tower was found by people in Babel three years ago."
In A, "in Babel" is the attribute", whereas in B it's the adverbial of place. This may but may not be apparent to foreigners and it may definitely influence their understanding.
To sum it up, yes, diagramming may help you as a non-native-speaker understand the
sentence, or correct its syntax, etc.
sentence, or correct its syntax, etc.
Diagramming helps you even if you don't know English terminology - it shows the relationships, the "syntagmata".
Best,
Petr
2005/12/28, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Hi Wahid,
I'm curious. Why did you want to diagram that sentence? (I did not
enter into the discussion, because, although I was taught how to
diagram sentences very early, around age 10 or 12---i.e, around 1960 to
1962) .... we were also told that "nobody bothers to diagram sentences
anymore, it is a useless exercise ..." Since age 12 no English teacher
ever required me to diagram a sentence .... and several said it was a
waste of time ....
Does diagramming help you as a non-native-speaker understand the
sentence, or correct its syntax, etc?
Cheerio,
John
(pseudo-Anglophile,
pseudo-Humanist,
pseudo-Weltbürger,
genuine dilletante and sufferer from middle-age-crisis)
:)
