Carissa Halston is very awesome and also pretty hot. You can read my review of her novella Mere Weight over on the Rumpus by clicking right here. You can peruse Carissa’s website here and stalk her on Twitter here. Stalking Carissa Halston is highly recommended (I’m sure she’d agree).
So I’d been planning to sentence diagram a poem but hit up against, well, my complete lack of education regarding the terminology of English grammar very early on. I now understand why my French teacher in school would get annoyed that we didn’t know what the object of a sentence was.
I told Carissa about my dream and she very kindly sat me down (online) and laid it all out for me.
Carissa, many thanks. The poem is as yet un-diagrammed I have failed you and the state of contemporary literature. Forgive me.
@jessicamaybury Sorry about the delay–distraction at work. So, articles: a, an, the. Definite: the. Indefinite: a, an.
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
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@jessicamaybury Modifier: fancy word for anything which describes another word, in this case, two adjectives describing one noun.— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury Subject: almost always a noun (I’ll give you an exception in a second). It is the word which carries out/embodies the verb.
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury Predicate: just another word for verb. Predicates can be actions or states of being. Ex: to run vs to be; to jump vs to seem
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury Preposition – a word that begins a phrase which acts takes the objective case (more on that in a sec). Our prep here is over— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury “Over the lazy dog” is a prepositional phrase and the object (in this case, the location) of the fox’s jumping.— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury Many things can be objects. “I give the pen to Mark.” Both the pen and Mark are objects. pen = direct, Mark = indirect
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury In the 1st example sentence, the prepositional phrase is our object and within that, you have the object of the preposition.
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury The object of the preposition is ALWAYS the noun at the end of the phrase.— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury Objects are useful because they signal agency (subject vs. object), which tells you he who acts & he who is acted upon.— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury Okay–I promised an example wherein the subject is not a noun. “Red is my favorite color.” We hear this all the time.
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury We rarely talk about it, but this is a case of inversion. It means the same thing as “My favorite color is red.”
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury The difference is that “red,” an adjective, takes the subject case in the first sentence. It’s not a noun. It’s still an adj— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury …it’s also an example of ellipsis.— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury Ellipses (besides being this: …) are any case wherein something is omitted b/c it is “understood.”
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury We understand the meaning of the sentence as “[The act of] doing the right thing is admirable,” which makes act the subject.
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury But no one is going to say all that (which gets into conversational principles, a lesson for another day).— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury So, “doing” is nominalized (fancy word for making a non-noun into a noun) and a verb becomes a noun.— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury Also, remember that you can reverse the positions of the object and subject. If the sentence is still logical, the cases…
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
@jessicamaybury …don’t change.
— Carissa Halston (@CarissaHalston) September 27, 2012
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