PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR 107
Tree Diagrams
Grammar is about sentences—the form of the words and their functions in sen-
tences. Consequently, analyzing individual sentences is a major part of gram-
matical study. Such analysis can provide a great deal of information about
language. In the 19thcentury, Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg developed a
way to diagram sentences in an effort to make grammatical analysis more re-
vealing and meaningful. Many schools continue to use Reed-Kellogg diagrams
today, more than a hundred years later. As the examples that follow suggest, the
Reed-Kellogg approach to diagramming sentences gets very complicated very
quickly. These diagrams have no labels for constituents, so it is not easy to note
at a glance what the constituents are. Understanding the structure of any sen-
tence demands understanding the structure of the diagramming procedure,
which is arbitrary and often counterintuitive.
Let’s consider three simple sentences:
- Fred is a good friend.
- Running is good exercise.
- Buggsy believed that he was a handsome dog of a man.
Looking at sentences 6 and 7, we can see the counterintuitive nature of
Reed-Kellogg diagrams. Any analysis of a sentence must provide informa-
tion about form, but it also should describe clearly the relations of the vari-
ous components. The lack of labels in the Reed-Kellogg approach is a big
handicap in this regard. It forces Reed-Kellogg diagrams to adopt different
graphic structures for words that have identical functions but different
forms. All but exceptional students have a hard time figuring out how the
different graphic structures reflect their corresponding grammatical rela-
tions. In sentence 6, for example,Fredis a noun functioning as the subject,
Sentence 4.6: Fred is a good friend. (Reed-Kellogg diagram)