Quote of the Day: Gertrude Stein on Diagramming Sentences

 

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.
Gertrude Stein

Being able to diagram sentences is like being able to read music: many people will think your skill useless, but it can add incredible value to your appreciation and love of the beautiful.

I love language. I love the construction, the usage, the etymology, the comparisons. I like to learn languages — I’ve studied French, German, Japanese, Latin, and am currently learning Spanish, Italian, and Catalan on Duolingo.

One of the things I find deeply exciting, like Gertrude Stein, is how the language hangs together, how the sentence structure can, like the structure of great architecture, support something meaningful.

Grammar can be beautiful, it can be innovative, it can help us frame our thoughts more clearly. For a writer like Stein, clearly, diagramming sentences allowed her to get deeply into the heart of the language as she wrestled with the most effective way to communicate her thoughts.

My teachers in grammar school (parochial school from kindergarten through 8th grade), Dominican nuns, loved diagramming sentences. We all stood at the chalkboard, parsing and laying out the bones of sentences like a fun game.

When I am driving around or hiking or out in a boat, I like to be able to have a mental map of where I am in the geography of the place. Similarly, I grasp the grammar of the sentence by forming a mental picture of the diagram. The diagram helps me travel true, as it were.

In my homeschool, I use a wonderful book in the ninth-grade English course called Grammar by Diagram: Understanding English Grammar Through Traditional Sentence Diagramming, by Cindy Vitto. We have the second edition, but I understand that a third is out. I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you want to study grammar. The book is interesting, well-laid out, methodical. The sentence examples are interesting. There is a complete answer key in the back of the book.

Usually, my students (I’m on my sixth and final student) find it a little tedious at the beginning but then find that they really enjoy the entire process. So far, they all agree that it is one of the best texts they used in their homeschool days.

The back cover of the text is adorned with the Gertrude Stein quote that inspired this essay.

Did you study grammar in your school days? Did you diagram sentences? Did you like it? Have your children studied grammar?

This is part of the February 2023 Quote of the Day Group Writing project. Sign up here.

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There are 39 comments.

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  1. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    CB Toder aka Mama Toad (View Comment):

    Charlotte (View Comment):
    Did someone say something about cake?

    I believe we’ve already established that I ate the cake…

    The cake is a lie.

    • #31
  2. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    I remember our (sadistic) English teacher having Good Old Grammar days. Don’t remember diagramming sentences….I feel robbed!

    • #32
  3. Misthiocracy has never Member
    Misthiocracy has never
    @Misthiocracy

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    CB Toder aka Mama Toad (View Comment):

    Charlotte (View Comment):
    Did someone say something about cake?

    I believe we’ve already established that I ate the cake…

    The cake is a lie.

    • #33
  4. Lilly B Coolidge
    Lilly B
    @LillyB

    Looking into getting the Grammar by Diagram book, and the 3rd addition is $89! The 2nd edition is $45, so I wonder how necessary it is to use the new edition. Is it so expensive because it’s a book and workbook? I see that there’s also a separate workbook. I’d appreciate your thoughts. We do not homeschool, but our girls love to write.

    • #34
  5. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    BDB (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    BDB (View Comment):
    I think this is because English with its largely positional case marking means that young people adopt the language with no signposts toward case. We find it difficult to formalize case because we never needed to, and we don’t have a well-known case-indicating vocabulary (inflections and such) to fall back on when we are told to now understand it formally.

    Could you clarify “case” without a lot of effort? Not sure if I learned about that . . .

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case

    As an example (pasted in from that Wikipedia article, this will give you a sense of what “case” is — the term in partheses names the case exemplified:

    An example of a Russian case inflection is given below (with explicit stress marks), using the singular forms of the Russian term for “sailor”, which belongs to Russian’s first declension class.

    • моря́к (nominative) “[the] sailor” [as a subject] (e.g. Там стоит моряк: The sailor is standing there)
    • морякá (genitive) “[the] sailor’s / [of the] sailor” (e.g. Сын моряка — художник: The sailor’s son is an artist)
    • моряку́ (dative) “[to/for the] sailor” [as an indirect object] (e.g. Моряку подарили подарок: (They/Someone) gave a present to the sailor)
    • морякá (accusative) “[the] sailor” [as a direct object] (e.g. Вижу моряка: (I) see the sailor)
    • моряко́м (instrumental) “[with/by the] sailor” [as a direct object] (e.g. Дружу с моряком: (I) have a friendship with the sailor)
    • о/на/в моряке́ (prepositional) “[about/on/in the] sailor” [as a direct object] (e.g. Думаю о моряке: (I) think about the sailor)

    BDB note on pronunciations (in order):

    Moryak

    Moryaka

    Moryaku

    Moryaka

    Moryakom

    O / Na / V’ Moryakye

    Here’s a fun statement off the wikipedia page on grammatical cases:

    “As a language evolves, cases can merge (for instance, in Ancient Greek, the locative case merged with the dative case), a phenomenon officially called syncretism.[4]

    I sure wish I could state, “Well of course I knew that!” Only I have no clue what so ever as to what the statement means.

    • #35
  6. CB Toder aka Mama Toad Member
    CB Toder aka Mama Toad
    @CBToderakaMamaToad

    Lilly B (View Comment):

    Looking into getting the Grammar by Diagram book, and the 3rd addition is $89! The 2nd edition is $45, so I wonder how necessary it is to use the new edition. Is it so expensive because it’s a book and workbook? I see that there’s also a separate workbook. I’d appreciate your thoughts. We do not homeschool, but our girls love to write.

    I’ve used a single second edition for six students in succession. We do not write in the text but use notebooks and our chalkboard, and do many exercises orally. Someone else could use it after us; it’s in quite good shape. We’ve never used a workbook and I can’t speak at all about the third edition, which I’ve never seen.

    • #36
  7. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Lilly B (View Comment):

    Looking into getting the Grammar by Diagram book, and the 3rd addition is $89! The 2nd edition is $45, so I wonder how necessary it is to use the new edition. Is it so expensive because it’s a book and workbook? I see that there’s also a separate workbook. I’d appreciate your thoughts. We do not homeschool, but our girls love to write.

    Try Thrift Books at thriftbooks.com

    Or sign up to be a member at shopgoodwill.com

    Remember to write down your user name and password, as well as the email address you use to sign up if you have multiple emails.

    They  have items that the Goodwills across the USA have inventoried, and if something  is available, often it is priced at rock bottom prices.

     

    • #37
  8. Lilly B Coolidge
    Lilly B
    @LillyB

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Lilly B (View Comment):

    Looking into getting the Grammar by Diagram book, and the 3rd addition is $89! The 2nd edition is $45, so I wonder how necessary it is to use the new edition. Is it so expensive because it’s a book and workbook? I see that there’s also a separate workbook. I’d appreciate your thoughts. We do not homeschool, but our girls love to write.

    Try Thrift Books at thriftbooks.com

    Or sign up to be a member at shopgoodwill.com

    Remember to write down your user name and password, as well as the email address you use to sign up if you have multiple emails.

    They have items that the Goodwills across the USA have inventoried, and if something is available, often it is priced at rock bottom prices.

     

    Thanks for the tip! I am trying to break my book buying habit, so I’ll also see what the library has to offer. 

    • #38
  9. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    @mamatoad, once your last child is educated, you have a very lucrative career ahead of you, as a home-schooling consultant. I would guess that the demand is huge, and you could make a lot of money helping others avoid the government schools for their children. If you recommend particular materials, the companies which distribute those materials might pay you. 

    • #39
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