This document provides an overview of sentence structure and analysis. It defines a sentence as being made up of two main phrases: a noun phrase and a verb phrase. Each phrase can consist of a single word or multiple words. Sentences can also be analyzed as having two main parts: a subject and a predicate. Reed-Kellogg diagrams are introduced as a way to visually represent sentence structure, showing the relationship between subjects and predicates. Examples are given of simple sentences diagrammed in this way, and how modifiers are added to the diagrams.

1. Sentences
Ed McCorduck
English 402--Grammar
SUNY Cortland
http://mccorduck.cortland.edu

2. Recall the definition of sentences from slide 2 of the “Descriptive
Grammar of English” lecture: “made up of phrases.” That is, the
sentence Frank dies consists of two phrases, a noun phrase and a
verb phrase, each of which consist of only one word:
Frank dies.
NP VP
slide 2: phrases and sentences
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Grammar

3. Just as a much longer sentence like The man who is often called the best
Frank in the world is going to very painfully but very surely die that has
many words comprising the noun phrase and verb phrase also consists
of just these two main phrases:
The man who is often called the best Frank in the world
NP
is going to very painfully but very surely die.
VP
(Note: This sentence actually has what is called in traditional grammar a “split infinitive error,”
namely to very painfully but very surely die)
slide 3: phrases and sentences (continued)
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Grammar

4. We will use the following three categories in our analysis of
sentences:
• pattern: the overall structure of a sentence determined by the
type of the verb it includes
• slot: position in a sentence that can be filled only by a word of a
certain class or a phrase of a certain type
• function: the grammatical/semantic role that an element filling a
slot has in a sentence
slide 4: elements of sentences
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Grammar

5. To illustrate what is meant by “slots,” consider the following two
sentences which both have the same three slots, one before the
verb gave and two after it:
The concerned neighbor gave the bad boy a book.
slot slot slot
The concerned neighbor gave the police the bad boy.
slot slot slot
slide 5: slots
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Grammar

6. In the first sentence, the NP the bad boy occurs in the slot right
after the verb gave and right before another NP slot and by this
positioning usually signals what is traditionally called the “indirect
object,” i.e., that entity that is the “recipient” of the action
performed by the verb.
In the second sentence, the bad boy fills the second NP slot after
the verb which is usually the “direct object” slot, which means that
it’s for the entity that is “directly” affected by the action of the verb.
Thus, in the first sentence the bad boy is having something given
to him, and the thing that is given, the book, is directly affected, i.e.,
touched and handled, by the subject or doer of the action, i.e., the
concerned neighbor. In the second sentence, however, the bad
boy since it occurs in the direct object slot is the party directly
affected by the verb, i.e., the neighbor “gives” him—either by
physically detaining him or pointing him out with a gesture—to the
police.
slide 6: illustration of the significance of slots
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Grammar

7. Sentences can also be described as having two main parts:
• subject (subj)
• predicate (pred)
slide 7: another way to look at sentence structure
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8. This last approach to analyzing sentences is useful in creating
Reed-Kellogg (sentence) diagrams. To illustrate, let’s do a Reed-
Kellogg diagram of the English sentence that makes up the
shortest verse in the New Testament, namely John 11:35: “Jesus
wept.” As a preliminary to drawing the diagram, we can analyze this
sentence into a subject and a predicate like this:
Frank dies.
subj pred
slide 8: Reed-Kellogg diagrams
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Grammar

9. Notice that we could also describe this sentence in terms of a noun
phrase and a verb phrase as mentioned starting on slide 2 above,
that is, Jesus is the one-word NP and wept the single-word VP.
However, I don’t want to make this correspondence between initial
noun phrases and “subjs” on the one hand and VPs and “preds”
on the other for a couple of reasons that would be a little too
complicated to go into at this point. Instead, for a while we’ll keep
defining this essential structure of all English sentences in terms of
subjects and predicates.
The upshot is that with this analysis of Jesus wept we can make
the Reed-Kellogg diagram of this sentence like this:
slide 9: NPs, subjs, VPs and preds
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Grammar

10. In Reed-Kellogg diagrams, a single vertical line bisecting a
horizontal line represents the division between the subject and the
predicate. On the horizontal line, a.k.a. the main line, you put only
the headwords of the respective NP and VP that make up the subject
and the predicate, and in this case the headwords Jesus and wept
compose an entire NP and VP, respectively, so we simply put both
on the main line and we’re done.
slide 10: illustration of a simple Reed-Kellogg diagram
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Grammar

11. Not all sentences are as simple as Jesus wept, of course. Almost
all other sentences we create have more than two words, and most
of those have other words besides headwords. In Reed-Kellogg
diagrams, most non-headwords (for which I’m using the generic—
and not very accurate—term “modifiers” here) are put on lines
running down from the main line forming an angle of roughly 45
degrees. The modifying words are written on top of those lines and
also on a slant, and the lines are placed under the headwords the
modifiers “go with.” For example, following is the diagram of the
sentence The Lord wept softly, a slightly elaborated version of the
previous sentence we diagramed (or diagrammed, if you prefer):
slide 11: Reed-Kellogg diagrams of sentences with modifiers
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12. In this case, the modifier (actually determiner and specifically
definite article the that signals the following noun Lord) goes on
one slanted line underneath Lord which is on the main line and the
adverb softly goes under the verb wept which it “modifies.”
slide 12: example of a Reed-Kellogg diagram with modifiers
English 402:
Grammar