Diagramming sentences in French...

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I am wondering if anyone has ever seen or done this.  I grew up learning to diagram in English, but have never seen anyone diagram anything in French.  It seems like it would be a much more powerful tool in French, where there are many more things that need to be "put in agreement" with each other.  And being able to sort out the awful tout/tous/toutes nonsense seems easier if the sentence were diagrammed. 

 

Anyway... has anyone ever seen resources for this, or does it simply not exist in French?

[momof2cm]

I am not a native but I had French in school from fifth grade all the way through high school. I attended school in Europe. For all the languages we learned, we never diagrammed. I had never even heard of the concept until we started homeschooling our kids. This being said, we do analyze sentences but do it in a horizontal way. We mark the relationships between words and find subject, verb, DO, IO etc. We use single line, double underline, arrows, you name it. The concept is the same as diagramming, but it is less detailed. (and less space is required!)

 

Hope this helps.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Ok, so this sort of analysis is done, just not in the diagramming form...

 

I guess my next question is:  Can anyone think of a reason NOT to diagram sentences in French?  lol. 

[Guest]

ummm....no resources to show how? I would think it would rather the same as doing so for English sentences. If you try it, let us know how it went.

[Joan in GE]

There was a thread about diagramming in other languages in 2011.

 

Joan

 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Wow Joan, good memory!  Ok, I have been wracking my brains and can't think of any reason *not* to diagram in French, so I think we will give it a shot!

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

The rules for diagramming would not perfectly apply to French, as we sometimes deal with totally different sentence structures. Of course, right now, I can't think of a case. Duh. Oh! One reason comes to mind. This is very weird in French, but some words change meaning depending on the place in the sentence. For example "Sébastien est un grand homme" and "Sébastien est un homme grand" are two different beasts! ( a great man vs a tall  man) If you were to diagram them the English way, the subtlety in meaning would be lost.

 

What we did do was like momof2cm said, we underline, double underline, box, circle, draw arrows, use colours extensively. It's just not as graphical. 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Cleo-  Thank you!  That is a fantastic explanation for why this wouldn't work for French as well.  I know exactly which group of adjectives you are talking about.  I wonder if there are any other "pieges"...  We are currently just using colors to pick out the noun and verbs in both languages, I'll just stick to it for French.

[Tito Frescado]

 

On 8/1/2013 at 4:05 PM, C_l_e_0..Q_c said:

This is very weird in French, but some words change meaning depending on the place in the sentence. For example "Sébastien est un grand homme" and "Sébastien est un homme grand" are two different beasts! ( a great man vs a tall  man) If you were to diagram them the English way, the subtlety in meaning would be lost.

I think that you can still diagram that example by treating "grand homme" as a compound noun, putting it together on one horizontal line of the diagram. "Homme grand" is a noun with a modifying adjective which would require "homme" to be on a horizontal line and "grand" to be on a diagonal line below it.