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[wildgrace]

Has anyone diagrammed sentences? I've been working on sentence diagramming to help me understand grammar consciously as a native English speaker.

I am also currently looking at pronunciation, specifically suprasegmentals like sentence stress and thought groups. I think sentence diagramming could help with teaching suprasegmentals.

For example, the words that go on the top line in sentence diagramming - the subject, predicate, direct object, object complement are most likely to be stressed, and the modifiers under these are most likely to be unstressed.

As well, the grouping of each section would help with thought groups. For example you would keep words associated with the subject together as a thought group, and words associated with the predicate with a thought group, and the words associated with the direct objects as a thought group, etc

I'm still thinking through the idea. What do you think? Does combining sentence diagramming with sentence stress and thought groups make sense?

[papuadn]

[dragonpiwo]

Yes, of course it's a useful too.

I've been a very successful teacher for 23 years and haven't got a clue what Papu was on about. Google translate should have a language called 'linguistibollox' on it.

[fluffytwo]

Disciplines such as (C)onversation (A)nalysis manage to say a lot (in fact, appreciably more) about prosody (stress, intonation, tone groups or whatever, etc) without the need for tree diagrams.

Of course, there are still some "underlying" analytical assumptions and mechanisms at work but the resulting presentation of the analysis is pretty much the linear, line-by-line, decidedly "flat" ("non-hierachical") original text with comparatively few notational additions other than those marking things such as pauses (silences, inaudibles), stress etc.

Perhaps take a look at stuff like the late David Brazil's work on discourse intonation (e.g. The Communicative Value of Intonation in English; A Grammar of Speech) and compare that to the predominantly syntax-focussed concerns (subject-verb agreement, gaps, what PPs are modifying/their scope) of e.g. chapter 4 of Pinker's The Sense of Style.

Then there are whole books involving tree diagramming, but one gets the idea that a fair bit of it is more a question of sectual preferred notation (e.g. X-bar theory) than anything that has become of proven mainstream value. That is, there may be more than one way to diagram any given sentence, despite much being the same or of a muchness ( https://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-1932.html#1 ).

I like the analogy that Geoffrey Sampson makes in his English for the Computer - that grammatical analyses are (still!) more a matter of establishing workable precedents i.e. some sort of consensus, much like Law develops (rather than being handed down from on high on perfectly-carved immutable stone tablets, say), and that is sort of the impression one gets from Brazil's work too, as there is as ever the all-important question of communicative function (which may of course vary, even for the "same" sentence as and when applied to a variety of contexts) to factor (keep factoring) in.

And as Papuadn suggests, detailed syntactic analysis would seem out of place and indeed ultimately unnecessary in a sufficiently communicative classroom (provided of course that you the teacher have done enough research on the matter of prosody etc to be confident of what you are showing and demonstrating rather than necessarily explaining to or yourself still working out with the students!).

[papuadn]

[scot47]

I felt happy if students got S V O for statements

[wildgrace]

Thanks for your thoughts. Reason I am considering this is because a few books and articles I just read mention that teaching suprasegmentals improves understanding of what the speaker is saying by the listener. Rhythm, intonation and thought groups provide cues that help the listener focus on key words and phrases.

[fluffytwo]

I Googled 'thought groups esl' and the second-to-top result is a JenniferESL clip on YouTube, which I'll take as broadly representative of the approach most teachers might take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHZIA0-G1sc

It may just be me but I'm a bit puzzled and not entirely convinced with the way she goes from using written punctuation as a guide in the fluent reading of at least whole clauses to positing pauses (albeit "shorter" ones, marked with a / rather than //) between constituents such as Subject (A beautiful woman) and Predicate (came into the room). Is there an empirical basis to her approach or is she just making up what she hopes will be "helpful" suggestions?

These sudden mid pauses are pretty much impercebtible in her native speech (versus that produced "for the purposes") and will surely be hard for foreign learners to "replicate" (that, or they will likely and predictably start introducing unnaturally long pauses if simply instructed to 'Pause however briefly here, and here, and oh here too maybe').

So one may ironically end up with a case of certainly learners starting to sound like the unnatural (#1) reading of the clip's first text despite the purported aim of these lessons being to produce natural speech rhythms.

I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever pauses are or are not perceived if not produced in reasonably rapid and authentic speech are ultimately a resolutely bottom-up reflection of simply "stressing" (giving equal weight and time to) each monosyllabic word, and certainly the correct syllable in each multisyllabic word: A BEAutiful WOman CAME INto THE ROOM (articles=likely schwas, not /ei/ and esp. not th/i:/). The stress patterns (note the roughly even spread) take care of the so-called pauses, at least within sentences or clauses.

This takes the unattainable top-down mystery out of fluency and returns things to solid and achievable basics, reserving such things as truly MARKED (contrastive) stress for those CELTAy masterclasses in which the listener is profoundly deaf or stupid and the speaker has to make themselves hoarse: A beautiful woman came into the room. What's that, a beautiful man you say?! No, a beautiful WOMan <eyeroll>.

It's been a while since I read (dipped into) any of Brazil's work but there is more (IIRC and at least implicitly things such as e.g. the speaker's management of turns/the floor) to him than the following (the 4th Google result), which seems even more top-down and probably too demanding of the learner: https://elfpron.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/identifying-and-practising-tone-units/

Anyway, can I ask what you've been looking at in particular, Wildgrace? Links like I've discussed in this post?

[papuadn]

https://scholar.google.ro/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=%22thought+groups%22+esl

[fluffytwo]

Sorry, but the empiricism isn't exactly leaping out from the papers listed in those search results, Papuadn. I'd probably be better dusting off my books (and beyond the Brazils!) to find an answer to my question.

[wildgrace]

Some resources that I found helpful:

A course on teaching pronunciation (found the topics helpful) - http://coursematerials.eli.ubc.ca/pick_up_pronunciation/index.html

Articles I found helpful:
3 ps of ESL workplace - http://contact.teslontario.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/a1.pdf

Teaching pronunciation with the prosody pyramid - http://www.tesol.org/docs/default-source/new-resource-library/teaching-pronunciation-using-the-prosody-pyramid.pdf?sfvrsn=0

Book
Pronunciation Myths - https://www.amazon.com/Pronunciation-Myths-Applying-Language-Classroom-ebook/dp/B00ZYNASTG - book not talking about thought groups, I did find it a good read

There is one article I cannot find. Where the author talks about having students read/listen and determine what the thought groups are. What matters is they are thinking about thought groups, not that they correctly identify thought groups.

I am at the beginning of my teaching ESL journey, I would like to thank the people who took the time to post their thoughts.

[fluffytwo]

Thanks for posting those links. The Prosody Pyramid one looks useful* (dealing as it does with the actual nature of the sounds involved rather than [as JenniferESL does] risking adding just overly-discernible pauses on the basis of printed text and with no actual authentic audio in sight or rather earshot LOL), and the U of Michigan Myths series of books (I have the Vocabulary Myths one) aren't bad, for those willing to buy 'em - not quite as good as the best CUP or OUP stuff, but thought-provoking enough. The UBC stuff looks OK (basic enough), not sure of the relevance of the 3 P's workplace thing tho (but then I only took a very quick flick through it).

Talking of pyramids of a sort, that's reminded me of the backchaining expansion drills in the first half of the original Colloquial Chinese (review and relevant screenshot here: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/46593-our-favourite-textbooks/?do=findComment&comment=353297 ). The good thing with those is that the authors have done the necessary "chunking" for the learner already (i.e. each line is as the review says 'a complete and well-formed utterance in itself').


* Note especially the following: "Teachers sometimes ask for rules to give their students about how to decide where to begin and end a thought group. Although linguists have been studying this question for decades, no one seems to have developed rules that are sufficiently simple and practical for language learners. Instead of attempting to teach complex rules, it is far more useful to help students learn to hear the signals of thought grouping and think about grouping in their own speech." (pg12)

And (perhaps most importantly):

"In slow speech, the pause is the most obvious indicator that a thought group has ended. But during rapid speech, there is no time for pauses, so pitch drops are essential signals." (pg11)

To which I would add that parsing, especially of printed texts long after the fact or situation of their "utterance" (or often just writing), is a luxury one is simply not afforded in speech (though obviously native levels of listening ability are doing something at least linearly and anticipation-wise, and with the general prosody - stress, intonation, "etc"). This is one of the foundational points in and reasons powering Brazil's aforementioned A Grammar of Speech for one (a work brought somewhat more up to date via https://books.google.com/books?id=5H0vdKMcx70C&printsec=frontcover&dq=francis+o'grady+spoken+grammar , which again I've only had time so far to dip into than read fully and in sure detail).