Quickie leg-up help needed with diagramming this sentence. Please.

[Janice in NJ]

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat.

For some reason, I'm just not sure of this:

with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat

I'm flip-flopping about what's what with this chunk of the diagram. I can see the parts, but for some reason I can't nail down the relationships in a confident way.


Help! THANKS!

Janice

[Anne/Ankara]

But it isn't a complete sentence, is it-- no subject or predicate... isn't the whole thing just a fragment?

[Raders Fan]

Yes, it's just a fragment.

Jennifer

[Janice in NJ]

Sometimes I just assume that everyone knows what I'm thinking. MY BAD!!!


J.R.R. finishes it up. I think the first past is just elliptical with an understood "It was"

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Does that help?

Janice

[Riverfront Headmistress]

Janice, I'm now working on the first three sentences of the book. Ugh.

I think I have sentence three figured out, but scratching my head on the first two sentences. In fact, I keep flip-flopping as well.

Are you up to discussing your finds and how/why you achieved it?

[ThelmaLou]

I just went searching for that fabulous post where someone from this board posted videos of an entire language arts session with their kids using this passage. I found it, only to discover that's it's you, Janice from NJ! Wow! That sentence must have been eating at you for a long time!

[Janice in NJ]

Actually I asked that about diagramming that sentence the day that we recorded our language arts session. It was bugging me because I just didn't know where to put that part. In the video I commented that I didn't know what to do with that section, but that I had asked my buds on the boards and was waiting for an answer. :001_smile:

Isn't life grand? What a blast-from-the-past!

Peace,
Janice

Enjoy your little people
Enjoy your journey

[Rhondabee]

Sometimes I just assume that everyone knows what I'm thinking. MY BAD!!!


J.R.R. finishes it up. I think the first past is just elliptical with an understood "It was"

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Does that help?

Janice


Could it be that the independent phrase begins with "it was a hobbit-hole", and the first part of the sentence, "Not a nasty..." is an inverted appositive?

And, then you would actually have two appositives. One "hole" modified by "not a nasty, dirty, wet hole....smell" - joined by the conjunction "yet" (modified by "nor") to the second appositive "hole" modified by "a dry, bare, sandy...eat"

IRDK. Just a thought~

ETA: Sorry. Now I see you were just concerned about that one wierd phrase that starts like a prepositional phrase and ends with infinitives. Hmmm......

[Rhondabee]

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat.

For some reason, I'm just not sure of this:

with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat

I'm flip-flopping about what's what with this chunk of the diagram. I can see the parts, but for some reason I can't nail down the relationships in a confident way.


Help! THANKS!

Janice


I still think "hole" is an appositive, but whether that's true or not, the "with nothing" is modifying "hole". That makes "nothing" a substantive (modified by "in it" underneath).

The verbals "To sit down on" (an infinitive phrase) and "to eat" (an infinitive) are then compound object complements and are diagrammed after a slanted line after "nothing" (like a predicate nom or adj's line). They should each be on one of those "Men-at-work" looking signs. (yes, whenever these come up I *have* to sing "We come from the land down under" for the rest of the day.) They would further be on a fork, with the conjunction "or" between them on the dotted line.

What'cha think?

[Riverfront Headmistress]

This sentence is really puzzling my brain.