So what is parsing ??

[Anon blush]

how is it defined and how is it different from diagramming?

[Martha]

Hello Anon!

Well, all I knew about parsing before I picked up Harvey's Elementary a couple of years ago was that Laura Ingalls Wilder did it as part of her teacher's exam. After we had done it for awhile, ds and I decided that she must have been pretty smart to be able to do it on short notice.

Here's what Harvey's says about parsing. In general, parsing consists of
1. Naming the part of speech.
2. Describing its properties.
3. Pointing out its relations to other words.
4. Giving the rule(s) for its construction. (The rules are provided in the text.)

Each part of speech has a slightly different pattern to be followed. For nouns, there are six statements to be made about the word given, and six questions to be answered about that word. The last step is to show which of the rules of syntax apples in this specific case.

For nouns, the pattern is as follows:
1. You state that the word is a noun, and tell why it fits the definition for nouns.
2. Tell whether it is common or proper and how it fits the definition of either common or proper nouns.
3. State the gender, and tell how it fits the definition for one of the gender categories.
4. Tell which person, the noun denotes, and how it fits the definition for 1st, 2nd or 3rd person.
5. State the number, and tell how it fits the definition of either signular or plural nouns.
6. State the case of the noun, and tell how it fits the definition of either nominative, objective, possessive, or absolute case.
7. You then go to the rules for construction, and look at all the rules that apply to nouns, and select and state the number of the rule that applies, telling why that particular word as used in a sample sentence illustrates any particular rule or rules.

The lessons in Harvey's will cover all the things you need to know. Parsing falls under the heading of syntax; even though you will be looking at and analyzing single words, you will be doing so within the context of the sentence. HTH, and feel free to ask more questions if this isn't clearly stated.

Martha

[Martha]

Harvey's provides model sentences and parses them so that you will always have a guide to follow.

[Tracy Gustilo]

Yes.

I would add to Martha's list:

1) Identify the part of speech and give the definition.
2) Classify it.

(This covers what sub-type it is, like for a noun, whether it is common or proper, etc.)

3) Give properties.

For a noun, this is: gender, person, number and case. You describe the properties of the given word.

If you want, you can go ahead and give all the possibilities for the noun given. This is called declension.

For verbs, the properties are: voice, mode (mood), tense, number and person. To give all the possibilities for the verb given would be to conjugate it.

4) Relate to other words.

For nouns, this means to give its function in the sentence (subject, direct object, object of the preposition, etc.). For modifiers, you would tell what is being modified. For pronouns, you would tell what the antecedent is (the noun the pronoun stands in for).

5) Give the rule.

Here, I would suggest NOT using the rule NUMBER as given in Harvey's. Who cares about what number the rule is? What you want to do is to be able to state the rule, what it means, and how it applies to the case at hand.

Parsing is different from diagramming in that it focuses on a single word (in context) rather than a whole sentence. Diagramming is a way to give you an overall view of the whole sentence and how it functions according to its basic grammatical structure. Parsing goes into a lot more detail for each word than is required for diagramming. The information you pull out for diagramming is a sub-set of what is required for complete parsing.

For example, you do not usually need to know whether a noun is common or proper to diagram it (except in the case of proper noun phrases). You do not need to know verb tense or mood to diagram. You DO need to know whether a noun is functioning as the subject, direct object, or object of a preposition. You do need to know what an adjective or adverb is modifying.

Parsing and diagramming are complementary activities, but they have a different focus. Harvey's teaches parsing mostly, with not enough attention to diagramming. I think diagramming is actually easier and, in many ways, more important, especially for beginners and for rhetoric. Parsing can help with some "mechanics" (issues of capitalization, punctuation) and other problems of correctness (S-V agreement, for example). Parsing also helps greatly with Latin study. When you learn Latin grammar (to read), you are learning to parse.

Tracy

[Martha]

First, do you do much of it? Second, do you have your children memorize the rules? Good point about not using the numbers of the rules. I have to admit to laziness on that point. No wonder it sometimes takes us two days to parse one sentence--we just don't know the rules very well.

Martha

[Tracy Gustilo]

Actually, we don't do as much parsing as we could -- in contrast with diagramming, which we do a lot of.

What I have tended to do with my older dc is to roll parsing into "vocab" type studies. So using a model, they pick a word (either an unknown or an especially important word) and do a "vocabulary" study on it. This involves identifying the part of speech as used in the model sentence, looking it up, finding the correct definition, dealing with English derivations, investigating etymology, finding another example of the same usage -- and, yes, full parsing.

I tend not to "parse every word in this sentence". It's too much, and gets very boring after a while. <g> We parse enough to diagram when we deal with whole sentences.

I tend also not to do a lot of wholesale declension and conjugation of English words. This might be a mistake, actually, because one sure needs these skills in Latin. It might benefit Latin study tremendously to work regularly (and in the same format!) to decline and conjugate English nouns and verbs.

Re: rules. I am not a great believer in memorizing rules. I am much more interested in understanding what they mean and applying them. One memorizes to keep track of a number of things one needs to keep track of. One ought to be able to reconstruct from one's understanding most definitions, classifications and rules, supposing they have some basis in a larger or more fundamental framework. Remembering is always so much easier once you understand conceptually. I keep Harvey's list of rules handy when we parse. A copy on your wall or pasted on the inside cover of a notebook would be fine.

Lene did make a great comment one time about memorizing vs. reconstructing. She said she could always reconstruct or derive the formulae of physics as she needed them. But on a test, or when she was working on something else, she needed to be able to move faster. She realized that if she had simply memorized the formula, she could immediately apply it without having to go back and derive it again each time. Ideally, one would be able to do both.

Tracy