My friend, Hannah @ Here in the Lovely Woods, and I have been challenging each other with sentences to diagram. Now, we may be the only crazy people out there, but we think sentence diagramming is as fun, as brain-stretching, and even as relaxing as solitaire or Sudoku or crosswords or jigsaw puzzles.
I picked a doozy this week. It was a fairly random sentence from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, which I happened to have handy. I’ve given it a good go, but I wondered if anyone else would like in on the challenge. You can write out your diagram and send me a picture ([email protected]). It would be particularly helpful if an expert wanted to join us. You know, so we could actually figure out what we did incorrectly… If anyone is willing to have their diagram pictures posted, I think it would be awfully fun to do that, too. I’ll post mine!
Are you up for it?!! Here is the sentence:
“I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enough in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as to how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing being doubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes.”
Go for it, and let me know how it went!
ETA:
Okay, here is my attempt. I wasn’t sure how to diagram ‘because of’ so I guessed phrasal subordinate conjunction and then added an understood predicate for a clause. (Yeah, that’s probably stretching it… Ha!) Hannah pointed out that ‘because of’ is a phrasal preposition, so I added that alternate diagram. And I couldn’t decide whether to diagram ‘indeed’ as an interjection or an adverb. I’m sure there are a few other ‘iffy’ spots on this diagram. (Oh, and I left off ‘a’ from ‘dispute!’)
Kellie from Blue House Academy played along! It was a TOUGH sentence. Maybe hers is correct! Doesn’t it look lovely?!
