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#1: Parsing Author: Alex, Location: Cambs, UK

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:11 pm
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In my new GGBP edition of Kenya, when Con goes to visit Leila at the San she says that she is missing "parsing". Having now checked this in my PB I find it says the same thing. What is parsing? (Have had a look on google, which seems to think it is a computer thing or something to do with linguistics, neither of which seems particularly likely.)

#2: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:13 pm
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Parsing is "To break (a sentence) down into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part."

So... grammar, basically. (This word is a noun, this word is the object, this word is the subject etc.)

I think?

Last edited by Kate on Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:14 pm; edited 1 time in total

#3: Author: Chelsea, Location: Your Imagination

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:13 pm
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I think it is the linguistics explanation. Wasn't part of grammar in English class - parsing a sentence? I think they did it in latin and other languages as well.

#4: Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:14 pm
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From yourdictionary.com:

Quote:

1. To break (a sentence) down into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part.

2. To describe (a word) by stating its part of speech, form, and syntactical relationships in a sentence.

3a. To examine closely or subject to detailed analysis, especially by breaking up into components: "What are we missing by parsing the behavior of chimpanzees into the conventional categories recognized largely from our own behavior?" (Stephen Jay Gould). b. To make sense of; comprehend: I simply couldn't parse what you just said.

4.Computer Science To analyze or separate (input, for example) into more easily processed components.

I'm guessing it's the first one, would be done as part of English grammar (or I guess French and German grammar as well)

#5: Author: Lottie, Location: Humphrey's Corner

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:42 pm
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LizB wrote:

From yourdictionary.com:

Quote:

I'm guessing it's the first one, would be done as part of English grammar (or I guess French and German grammar as well)

Yes it is! Grammar used to be taught in English lessons, and we started with simple things like identifying parts of speech, then we went on to analysing and identifying complicated clauses. I can still remember the parts of speech, but I am a bit vague now about the definitions of all the subordinate clauses. I think Con should have been doing that in her lesson.

#6: Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:51 pm
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When we did sentence diagramming, and were asked to "parse," it meant we had to stand up and explain about each word. For example, each noun had to have kind-person-number-gender-case, and each verb form-use-voice-tense-mood-person-number. Amazing that I can still rattle those off!

My sister the computational linguist is always talking about how well her programs do (or don't) do parsing.

#7: Author: Liane, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 5:17 pm
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I was actually going to ask this last week but I forgot. Thanks Alex for asking and everyone else for answering!

#8: Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 6:08 pm
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Yes, I was taught it as part of grammar and we had to parse horrible convoluted sentences full of adverbs, adjectives and so on! It gave me a permanent horror of the passive tense.

We had to do it in Latin as well - highly necessary there.

Don't they teach it any more? It's probably called something else?

#9: Author: Pat, Location: Doncaster

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 6:29 pm
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I did it too. We called it clause analysis. I could do it in English - then!

#10: Author: Sarah_L, Location: Leeds

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 8:32 pm
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patmac wrote:

Don't they teach it any more? It's probably called something else?

Teach grammar in schools? Don't be daft. Shocked

Seriously, the only grammar lessons I had taught me what nouns, verbs and adjectives were. I'm not even sure we got onto adverbs. I learnt all my grammar (which wasn't much, mainly the names of the different tenses) from Spanish lessons. I only worked out what a split infinitive was when a newspaper mentioned 'To boldly go' was one.

#11: Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 9:01 pm
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Sarah_L wrote:

Teach grammar in schools? Don't be daft. Shocked

..... I only worked out what a split infinitive was when a newspaper mentioned 'To boldly go' was one.

LOL You might like this site then! see here

In my trade, the common modern error is 'data is' instead of 'data are'. It still sets my teeth on edge but younger colleagues just think I'm a pedantic old fogey - and they're probably right Rolling Eyes

#12: Author: Rosie, Location: Brest. Still amuses me...

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 10:40 pm
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I did a Linguistics module of 'Structure of Language' last year that was essentially parsing. Only we didn't call it that... It was VERY hard - and I had a head start being a linguist used to studying grammar (even if in another language!)

#13: Author: Kathye, Location: Staines

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 10:50 pm
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I did NO Grammer at school and still have no clue what verbs, adverbs, nouns are to this day.

This is probably is not helped by the fact that I am dyslexic and struggle with English anyway, but we were taught on the method that you just picked up grammer, naturally, and didnt need to be taught it Rolling Eyes

What a load of C***!

The only time we heard the words Nouns and Verbs being used was in French/German lessons, but as no one had ever explained what they where in the English language, it probably explains why we struggled to understand them so much more in a foreign langauge!!

Bitter, me, Noooooo

Now there are 2/3 generations who are generally terrible at Grammer they have decided maybe they should teach it again!

#14: Author: Rosie, Location: Brest. Still amuses me...

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 10:54 pm
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We didn't do much English grammar at school either! My year 8 and 9 English teacher (scary lady) once got so fed up with this that she sat us down and drilled the very basics into us and I personally never forgot! She really was VERY scary!

#15: Author: Kathye, Location: Staines

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 11:05 pm
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See I wish I had, had a teacher who had done that!

I've never forgotten my English teacher talking to my parents at Parents night and telling them (year 11 btw) that she was still amazed by my ability to write an entire essay with only one paragraph in it. This was the first time the teacher had ever mentioned the issue to me or parents!

I found sentences hard as well, but at least they were slightly more obvious, my problem was, no one had ever sat us down and explained what a paragraph was and how to write with them.

It was at this point I was very lucky and my mother (teacher) sat me down before my exmas with my essays and went through them showing me how to break them down into paragraphs, I'm still not that great at it, but at least I now have some!

#16: Author: Rosie, Location: Brest. Still amuses me...

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:17 am
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I'm still rather hazy on paragraphs. This leads to interesting essays at times.

And yes, I am very grateful to my teacher, as she was a very good teacher and really cared, but she was SO scary!

#17: Author: Caty, Location: New Zealand

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 1:55 am
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We did parsing at primary school in France. I remember circling noun & verb in red & drawing arrows between them. And we circled something else in green, but what they were, I do not recall. We never did anything like that in Ireland though.

#18: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 3:02 am
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I learned most of my formal grammar in French class. I'm running into problems learning Chinese because the textbook uses the full English names of the parts of speech, and I have no idea what a subjunctive clause is, or things like that.

We did get nouns, verbs, conjunctions, adverbs and adjectives, plus the use of the comma and period in English, but I still tend to have to check for proper use of colons and semi-colons. I was lucky enough to still get a bit of phonetics training.

I read a lot, so my writing technique is based mainly on the ability to hear whether something sounds right or not.

My brother hit a patch in the ever chaotic BC school system where they had embraced the 'whole language' approach - no grammar, spelling or phonetics, you just went by context and winged it. Correcting spelling and grammar was thought to stifle creativity, and calculators were used for basic arithmetic. It didn't last long.

In the same system, the high school teachers tended to complain because their students were hitting university and their grades were dropping from As and Bs to Cs and Ds, and the university profs were complaining because their first year English students couldn't write a coherent, grammatically correct, reasonably spelled paragraph.

One of the reasons I like this forum is because the emails use capitals, punctuation and complete sentences and words.

#19: Author: KB, Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 3:10 am
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There is a lovely example of parsing in one of the Little House books - the one where Laura receives her teaching certificate. My copy shows the way she has broken up the sentence into its many different parts. Not sure if paperbacks include it though...

#20: Author: Cath V-P, Location: Newcastle NSW

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 3:31 am
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Yes they do - it's in "Little Town on the Prairie", p220-1. Very Happy

#21: Author: Liane, Location: Manchester

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 6:04 am
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I learned most of my grammer in German lessons! The teacher kept asking us all these questions and we had no idea what she was talking about!

#22: Author: Lolly, Location: London

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 7:26 am
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Caty wrote:

We never did anything like that in Ireland though.

The first time I was actually asked to 'parse' was when I went to uni in Ireland. Before that I'd never heard the term used, although obviously we had to do it in Latin and Greek (not my strongest point either Laughing

).

I was going through a bit of a phase of Victorian public school literature at the time though so I thought that was great!

#23: Author: Rob, Location: Derbyshire, England

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 7:55 am
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Liane wrote:

I learned most of my grammer in German lessons! The teacher kept asking us all these questions and we had no idea what she was talking about!

So did I! I remember after one very frustrating lesson, trying to teach us about German grammer, the teacher gave up. She then spent the next couple of lessons actually teaching us all about grammer in English (so that we understood what she was talking about!) I've forgotten most of it now though Embarassed

#24: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:50 am
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The truly awful thing is that it isn't taught in junior schools any more. We learned the basics in junior school then more complex stuff at high school.

I went to one of the despised village schools, over forty pupils in our class, and we could all read and write fluently. When I was ten, two completely illiterate children, from travelling families, came into our class, but they could both read and write by the time six months had passed.

That's why I have such a problem with some of what EBD writes about the girls, especially those in the sixth form at the CS who can't find a predicate. I was always taught that a sentence has a subject and the rest of the sentence was the predicate. I've come to the conclusion that what EBD actually meant was a preterite - a past tense. That's why I had my doubts about the efficacy of teaching at the CS.

#25: Author: Róisín,

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 11:21 am
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We were taught it in primary school but not after the age of about ten. So the next time I came up against grammar was in a foreign language ie French, and IIRC I didn't equate the terms at all Rolling Eyes

(ie 'infinitif being ANY relation to 'infinitive') Grrr.

#26: Author: Karry, Location: Stoke on Trent

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 11:52 am
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Like Kathye I wasnt taught grammer, and also had the whole - "it stifles the creative flow" thing! (this was in the liberal sixties!)I struggled through french at school, and when I did a year of New Testament Greek was totally at sea. Consequently I have had to teach myself grammer and punctuation beyond the comma and full stop! The irony of this is that in my organisation I am the person who proofs things and gets asked about grammer and spelling!

#27: Author: JackieP, Location: Kingston upon Hull

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:00 pm
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I wasn't taught grammar either, at least, not that I can remember. We did have to learn huge lists of words for spelling tests though. I must have really annoyed the teacher who did the secondary school spelling tests (for giving the secondary schools an idea of what we knew) as I carried on for at least 10 minutes after everyone else had had to stop (you had to get a certain amount right to carry on)!

I think any knowledge of grammar which I have has been picked up through reading and trying to see what sounds right.

JackieP

#28: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:06 pm
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We were vaguely taught grammar at primary school and for a few lessons at secondary school, but that was it. I'm very picky about grammar, though, which I think comes from doing Latin! Unfortunately it tends to make anything I write in a formal context sound rather stilted in a "the kind of English up with which I will not put" sort of way Embarassed

#29: Author: Kat, Location: Kingston-upon-Thames/Swansea

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:29 pm
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I'm another who has never been taught grammar, and only a small amount of punctuation. Most of what I know/use comes from reading, and a useful little book my Mum gave me when she realised I knew absolutely nowt about verbs etc.

I'm still boggled by it all, though I do at least know what a noun and adjective are! That's about it though...

How about some of you who do know about it, teaching those of us who don't? It's never to late!!

#30: Author: Katherine, Location: London, UK

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 1:00 pm
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We could set up a Grammar thread in COT or English Tea. Then people could post questions and others could answer them.

#31: Author: Tiffany, Location: Is this a duck I see behind me?

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 1:06 pm
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I didn't know much English grammar until I started learning Latin (in sixth form). We weren't taught much grammar for English, French or German, and I just couldn't get on with German - they never bothered to explain to us about cases, what cases are FOR and how they work, they just expected us to be able to use the right one. At the beginning of Latin we were taught very carefully all about cases, and German suddenly started to make a bit of sense.

There's quite a strong argument for teaching Latin to fairly young children: not simply because it's a useful language in itself, but because it's so incredibly useful for other languages.

#32: Author: Fatima, Location: Sunny Qatar

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 1:44 pm
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*joins the gang of people never taught English grammar*

I've learned the little I know from teaching it in school over the last few years. I began with grade 6 grammar, which really was being thrown in at the deep end; fortunately I had a friend who taught me the stuff a lesson ahead of my teaching the kids. Now I'm doing grade 2 and 3 and am actually able to cope with their work!

#33: Author: Tiffany, Location: Is this a duck I see behind me?

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 1:57 pm
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What kind of things are your grade 2 and 3 people doing, Fatima? Could you teach it to us as well? Very Happy

#34: Author: Fatima, Location: Sunny Qatar

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 2:12 pm
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I had a bit of a panic just a couple of weeks ago when I got to the end of the grammar book and found that they had snuck in a new chapter, all about subjects and objects, something I've never grasped, but it was all nicely explained, with examples (presumably to help the teacher rather than the students!). Maybe I could start up a little grade 2 grammar corner here! It actually pleased me when I finally got to understand some of the things that I'd never had a clue about before. Rolling Eyes

#35: Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 2:17 pm
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In my schools, "predicate" was sometimes used as a fancy word for "verb," as well as in the wider sense. To quote Webster's:

Quote:

The predicate is a finite verb, alone or with an object or objects, adverbial adjuncts, or a complement.

#36: Author: Róisín,

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 2:20 pm
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So all that time the Chalet Girls were just looking for the verb?! I feel so cheated...

#37: Author: Fatima, Location: Sunny Qatar

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 2:21 pm
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Kathy_S wrote:

In my schools, "predicate" was sometimes used as a fancy word for "verb," as well as in the wider sense. To quote Webster's:

Quote:

The predicate is a finite verb, alone or with an object or objects, adverbial adjuncts, or a complement.

I didn't understand that! And I've always understood how they could not find a predicate in their Latin. I wouldn't have been able to, either!

#38: Author: JoS, Location: South Africa

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:18 pm
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At school, English grammar was drummed into us. As a result. I am rather a stickler for correct grammar. I recently marked third year law assignments and was horrified at the students' inability to write!

#39: Author: Alex, Location: Cambs, UK

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:41 pm
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Not quite grammar related, but I'd love it if someone could explain to me how to write introductions and conclusions (to essays).

Parsing sounds vile, to the point where I'd rather have visited Leila in hospital.

#40: Author: KathrynW, Location: London

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:46 pm
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Tiffany wrote:

There's quite a strong argument for teaching Latin to fairly young children: not simply because it's a useful language in itself, but because it's so incredibly useful for other languages.

I agree completely (but then I would Very Happy

). I only really learnt about parts of speech etc. when I started learning Latin which is a great language for learning the basics because different cases are marked by different endings and so you can actually see when something is a 'subject' or an 'object' by looking at the word and then you can work out *why* this is the case.

When I was at school, we were involved in a project called Minimus where we ran an after-school club once a week, teaching the basics of Latin to local primary school children. It was great fun for us and I think (well, at least I hope) the kids enjoyed it too as well as getting something out of it.

#41: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:46 pm
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Alex wrote:

Not quite grammar related, but I'd love it if someone could explain to me how to write introductions and conclusions (to essays).

I was once told 'say what you're going to say, then say it, then say what you've said.'

What subject are you writing essays on, and at what level?

Jay B.

#42: Author: Tara, Location: Malvern, Worcestershire

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 11:44 pm
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We had a very grammatically based education at my late 50s early 60s Girls' Grammar School. I used quite to enjoy analysing sentences into eleven columns (sentences got analysed into their component parts; individual words got parsed within an inch of their lives). I once taught under a HoD who was younger than I, and had been brought up on the 'grammar is instinctive' principle. He knew what it ought to be, but had no idea why, and would often send pupils into my class to ask what the rule for something was!

I realised how much life had changed when I was trying to convey to my Sixth Form French class that a relative pronoun takes its number and gender from its antecedent, and found myself saying, 'Look, let's call the relative pronoun Fred' ... (no-one had the wit to suggest Uncle Fred!).

On t'other hand, Primary schools these days do very sophisticated stuff.

#43: Author: Changnoi, Location: Milwaukee, USA

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 3:18 am
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I love parsing! I taught my English classes how to do it when I taught, though they didn't catch on very quickly, and the identification of various parts of speech always seemed like guesswork for them.

I learned most of what I know about grammar in my intro Sanskrit class. *They* had a grammatical system worth knowing about! I learned maybe tiny bits in French, never did English grammar until I was doing syntax in linguistics, in which we were expected to know standard grammar so we could disavow its usefulness while drawing pages-long sentence trees.

But I still love parsing,

Chang

#44: Author: Fatima, Location: Sunny Qatar

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 4:57 am
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I do agree with the 'grammar is instinctive' idea, but only as long as you have read reasonably widely and come from a family who have done likewise. I am like your former HoD, Tara; I know it's right, but haven't a clue why! Or what it's called either! I think now, with people reading less and sending text messages and so on, they need much more formal grammar teaching, as they really won't always know instinctively whether something is right or not.

#45: Author: Lolly, Location: London

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 7:31 am
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Alison H wrote:

We were vaguely taught grammar at primary school and for a few lessons at secondary school, but that was it. I'm very picky about grammar, though, which I think comes from doing Latin! Unfortunately it tends to make anything I write in a formal context sound rather stilted in a "the kind of English up with which I will not put" sort of way Embarassed

There seem to be rather a lot of Classicists on this board.....

#46: Author: KathrynW, Location: London

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 9:38 am
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Lolly wrote:

There seem to be rather a lot of Classicists on this board.....

That's because we are very cool people Very Happy

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