A recent post on the Assembly of Teaching of English Grammar listserv began in this way (minus three simplifying changes I’ve made):The following is an article from yesterday's "The Japan Times". I gave it to a couple of my adult classes here in Tokyo for discussion; for my students it perhaps was a long rather difficult sentence - but interesting from the current political position:
I try to discuss parts of interesting newspaper articles and I encourage the students to finish the rest of the article in their spare time.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, ecu grammarians, is to use the Kolln-Funk textbook to figure out a way to diagram the sentence about Prime Minister Taro Aso (he's the fellow in the suit in the photo above on the right).
To figure this one out, you'll need to learn how to identify and diagram: nominal infinitives, gerunds, compound adjectives, appositives, subordinating conjunctions and adverbial and adjectival phrases.
I still have yet to determine how much extra credit this will be worth, but I have decided that if you do it and get it right, it will affect the “quizzes” section of your final grade (as did the previous mission).
As always, the pure joy of the pursuit for an answer will be a substantial reward in itself.
