Watch: The Main Line (7 min video)

Transcript

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Well, I don’t even know how much people make students diagram sentences anymore. I know when I was in junior high, when we weren’t watching fist fights or putting seventh graders in the locker, seems like we were always diagramming sentences. And at the time, I didn’t like it very much. But since then, I’ve sort of learned to love sentence diagrams. For one thing, a sentence diagram gives analytical people, math people, science people, something to hang their hat on. It reminds them that language or writing isn’t something you just feel your way through, but actually there’s a system here. Language is as systematic as chemistry. On the other hand, sentence diagrams and grammar in general lets intuitive people, people who write by instinct, it reminds them also that language is systematic, that you don’t just feel your way through. It helps rein those people in. And I know it’s important because I sort of write by intuition. I write by instinct. And instinctive people, and by the way, I suspect there’s a good chance you’re one of these people. The people who take my classes tend to be people who come to writing a little more naturally. The problem with writing that way is even though you end up writing good sentences, you don’t always know how you wrote those good sentences. And when you write a sentence that’s not quite so good, sometimes it’s hard to see that too. I’m not trying to make you an expert diagrammer, but we are going to look at a few sentence diagrams in this lesson, and in the next lesson, and in a few other lessons, as a way of helping you think more systematically about the sentences you write.

So let’s start. Every sentence has a main clause. Now, it may have a lot of other things, too, but it always has a main clause. If it has two or more main clauses, we call that a compound sentence. If it has a subordinate clause, or maybe more than one subordinate clause, we call that a complex sentence. If it has two main clauses and one subordinate clause that’s a compound complex sentence, we’re not going to get into all that right now. We’re keeping it very simple in these first few lessons. As a matter of fact, you might say we’re keeping it overly simple. If you’re some kind of grammar expert, you’re going to know exceptions that I’m not accounting for in these lessons. I hope you’ll bear with me. Believe me, we’re going to get complicated enough before this thing’s over. But for now, we’re going to try to keep it simple. In this lesson, we’re going to think about the main clause. The main clause is that part of the sentence that answers the question, “Who did what?” That’s a question your reader is always looking to answer. Your reader always wants to know, “Who did what?” So “The bear slept,” “Linda kicked the ball,” “Her Simmons gave me a bellyache,” “You’re a sweetheart.” Okay, these are all sentences that consist of a main clause and only a main clause. And by the way, these four patterns plus one more pattern actually account for all of the sentences—all of the clauses—in the English language. And those are going to be the subject of a subsequent lesson. Now, as I said, we’re keeping this simple. In sentence diagramming, the main clause is represented on that main line—that horizontal line. So, in each of the diagrams for the sentences that I just gave you, all there is is a main line. There’s nothing branching off the main line. Now, hopefully, when you write sentences, you’re writing sentences that are a little more grammatically interesting than these. And if you were to diagram those sentences, you’d see things sprouting off the main line and branching in all kinds of different directions. Now, everything that branches off that main line is what we call a modifier. A modifier tells what kind of person is doing the action. It tells how that action is being done. Adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, participles, infinitives, these are modifiers. We’ll get to all those things in good time. I’m not trying to stress you out. I realize you may not know what those words mean yet. You will know soon. We’re going to cover all that in the next 30 or so lessons. In the meantime, let me just give you a very quick and admittedly un-nuanced summary about modifiers. Really, there’s just two kinds of modifiers. There are adverbial modifiers that answer questions about the action—how, when, where, why. And then there are adjectival modifiers that answer questions about nouns—what kind, one? How many? And modifiers might be piled on top of one another. They might be nested inside one another. Again, we’re going to get to all that when we get there. This unit of the course, which is really about a third of the whole course, is all about the main line. That main clause, that main question, “Who did what?” Your reader always wants to know that. All the modifiers, everything that branches off the main line, they tell us more about who was acting. They tell us more about how they did it, but the main line is just about that action. And the skill we’re working on in this lesson is just to identify that main line and separate it from all the modifiers. And to show you what I mean, let’s look at this sentence. The raccoon rattled the trash can. That’s a subject, a verb, and a direct object. As you can see from this diagram, all it is is a main line. Who did what? The raccoon rattled the trash can. Okay, now look at this sentence. The raccoon that I was telling you about, with the missing ear and the unusually bushy tail, rattled the trash can behind my garage with an insistence that bordered on obsession.

If we were to diagram this sentence, it would look like this. Much more complicated, as you can see. But look at that main line. It’s the exact same main line as the previous sentence. Who did what? The raccoon rattled the trash can. Five words. Those other 25 words are all modifiers. They tell us which raccoon. They tell us how he rattled the trash can. But the main action is the same. We’ve got a raccoon, we’ve got a trash can, and the raccoon is rattling the trash can. So as you can see, even though we start with the same main line, the same action, language allows for infinite complexity. You can modify the raccoon, you can tell us what kind of raccoon, you can tell us what kind of trash can, you can tell us how you rattle the trash can.

Within those modifiers, you can have more modifiers. This gets very complex very quickly. But I have some really good news for you. On the main line, your options aren’t infinite. They’re not even close to infinite. In fact, as I mentioned before, there are only five clause patterns. And these five patterns are easy to memorize. And with a little practice, you can get good at recognizing them. In the next few lessons, we’re going to look at the elements that appear on the main line of the clause. And there’s only four, by the way. There’s subjects, there’s verbs, there’s objects, and there’s complements. I’m going to give you some tools for identifying those elements. And pretty soon, you’re going to be an expert in handling those things. [MUSIC]