Having a husband who has a cousin who owns a Wine|Beer|Cigar Bistro is Big.
And then I issued a challenge--
[Diagram that sentence!]
I really thought I'd be able to diddle around on the World Wide Web while in our hotel room last evening and find an on-line sentence-diagramming program. I was expecting something like a language translator or equation solver. I did not find anything of the sort. I was bothered by this all the way from Midlen, Louisiana to The Farm.
This, dear reader, is why we need
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| From Harbrace Handbook of English, by John C. Hodges of the University of Tennessee; Copyright 1941 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., and printed in The United States of America; p 51 |
Pages 54-55 of Harbrace explain how to diagram subordinate adjective clauses. If I've understood these pages correctly, my little sentence is diagrammed:
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| Note that the main sentence is, "Having a husband is Big." |
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The front matter indicates that this book is from the English Workshop Series, and Harbrace is intended for "Grades Eleven and Twelve." It is intense. Perhaps this winter I'll share more Harbrace. It is one of my favorites.
Mostly agreed - although I think the "Wine/Beer/Cigar" is actually the name of the Bistro, isn't it? In any case, it seems to me to be a single name although multiple in form.
ReplyDeleteYeah...I started working on it, and decided that it was a gerundive phrase that was the subject - but I've never seen a _book_ on diagramming! That's neat!
Be careful though...if you get started you may not be able to stop! If that happens, I recommend Thackeray...he writes some sentences that are so convoluted and long (I remember one that was 2 pages long) that you'll either give up or end up tearing your hair out!
suek, you make an excellent point. I've thought about it all day.
ReplyDeleteThe name of the restaurant (bistro) is "Fion." I didn't include that info in this post (although it's in another). So "Fion" is a proper noun, right? Like "suek," quite proper. In my head, I was equating
Fion wine beer cigar bistro with
Aunt Patty's homestyle cookin' restaurant,
Where Fion and Aunt Patty's are the proper nouns and the rest are just modifiers-- wine beer cigar all modify bistro, homestyle modifies cookin' which modifies restaurant. (I admit it is convoluted for cookin' to modify restaurant-- anyway.)
BUT I can see how if the name of the bistro is the whole entire string: Fion Wine Beer... it would make a difference.
Grammar is like statistics for me. Every now and again it's fun to think about it, so I don't lose it!