I know a bit about semantics and pragmatics, but the other two I don't know.
When I was in the 3rd grade I was required to memorize all of the prepositions in alphabetical order, which seems to me like a fairly useless enterprise. Prepositions are not in danger of changing; and anyway, I've never heard a native English speaker completely frell up a prepositional phrase except in the presence of a much larger problem (e.g. a dangling modifier).
I analyzed sentences in linguistics class in college, but never in grade school. So, I can sort of tell you
what
you are doing, but not in a this-is-what-the-teacher-wants way.
I am sick today but at work, and that sucks. (The same cough I have had has not gone away, and is in some ways worse, and yes, I have a doctor's appointment for tomorrow afternoon.) I just realized, editing the above, that being sick robs you of all spelling instincts.
Another one here who learned more about English by taking German and Spanish than from her actual English classes. In fact, I still use German in a goofy way to know when to use certain pronouns in English. The prepositions
aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von and zu
are all "dativ" prepostitions that add an "m" (or in some cases an "n", but there's always a letter change) to the end of the pronoun/article meant to go with it. It's my guideline for using who/whom, he/him, etc. Seriously. Works like a charm.
My theory about diagramming sentences is that once you've taken a sentence apart that way, you'll retain some concept of the structure of the English sentence.
The comma today appears to be just as random sentence decoration, except here. Bless you all.
Robot thinks humans taste like bacon.
And everything tastes better with bacon...
Yay new TV!
Cute moose.
I never diagrammed a sentence, but my middle school English teacher strongly implied that we were supposed to have done a lot of it before then. I had not. I got by.
Huh. When my parents were in college they did a project trying to differentiate between good and bad wine using some kind of chromatography and failed (they like to tell this story. The bad wine was Fetzer). But an infrared spectrometer works. That's progress I guess.
The return of grammar:
I'm earwormed with "SexyBack," only now it's "I'm bringing grammar back...."
I’m bringing grammar back
Those participles don’t know how to act
If you dangle, I will make you crack
Watch me diagram your ass
Take it to the root . . .
I. Love. Vortex.
The comma today appears to be just as random sentence decoration, except here. Bless you all.
I edit the montly newsletter for a group I belong to; most of the articles are written by the president of the group. He abuses ellipses in 2 ways: (1) he uses them all the freaking time, and (2) I shit you not -- he uses commas instead of periods to make the ellipses.
It makes my head hurt and my eyes bleed.
