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Why we diagram sentences by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 12/24/2019, 3:36am PST
I was never taught to diagram sentences in school, and probably never would have needed to. I'm fairly bright, and usually can understand sentences pretty much automatically. One time I was readin material on a Usenet newsgroup and I posted a question about a related subject. The original poster came back with about a three paragraph reply, which, when you took out the fancy null words essentially equated to "I don't know."

Then I came across an interesting puzzle."What is the longest grammatically correct sentence you can construct in English using only one word?"

The word turns out to be "buffalo," And I could understand that you could get a five word sentence out of that.

Buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (It can also be done Buffalo Buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo..)

But I was wrong. It was reported a seven word sentence was possible. I thought about it, and for the life of me, I could not figure how you got seven. So I decided to diagram the sentence, that is, diagnose context and meaning.

The five word sentence "Buffalo¹ buffalo², buffalo³ Buffalo? buffalo? (with a superscript number attahed to each one to differentiate them) translates into:

Buffalo¹ [, New York] buffalo² [or buffaloes], buffalo³ [bully or confuse] Buffalo? [New York] buffalo?. If the sentence begins instead with, "Buffalo Buffalo," then it is translated as "Buffaloes from Buffalo, New Tork," and the rest is as indicated.

At this point "the scales fell from my eyes," and I "got" the seven-word sentence.

Buffalo¹ buffalo², buffalo³ Buffalo? buffalo?, buffalo? buffalo?.

(or the first two words can be capitalized and the initial result is as stated.) This seven-word version translates as:

Buffalo¹ [, New York] buffalo² [or buffaloes], buffalo³ [bully or confuse] Buffalo? [New York] buffalo?, 'who themselves then] buffalo? [vex other] buffalo?.

Now if you're thinking, it's trivial to push this to eight words.

Buffalo¹ buffalo², buffalo³ Buffalo? buffalo?, buffalo? Buffalo? buffalo?.

Buffalo¹ [, New York] buffalo² [or buffaloes], buffalo³ [bully or confuse] Buffalo? [New York] buffalo?, 'who themselves then] buffalo? [vex other] Buffalo? [, New York] buffalo?.

And this is why we diagram sentences, when we have trouble understanding them.

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Why we diagram sentences by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 12/24/2019, 3:36am PST NEW
    That's not why we diagram sentences, that's why we NT by moderate bulletin boards. 12/24/2019, 5:57am PST NEW
 
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