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In grammar yesterday, we diagrammed more sentences. I wasn't quite overwhelmed with joy (though some of the sentences are funny: "Some people consider Minnesota's winters excessively long." "Our grocer calls asparagus the Rolls Royce of vegetables." "Kristi became the Webmistress for a new dot-com company."--which just made me think What? I never thought of "webmaster" having a feminine form! What an ugly word!) until we got to "Jeff pleaded innocent."
It's deceptively simple, which is only part of its allure, if you ask me. You have your subject, Jeff. Your verb, pleaded. Your ... innocent. What is that? First someone said it was functioning as a noun. It's a condition, a state, an idea. He entered a plea of innocent. That would make pleaded a transitive verb. It was also said that innocent could be seen as an adverb, added to the--intransitive in this case--verb pleaded. Then, it was said that innocent could be an adjective to describe Jeff, which would make it a linking verb!
Our teacher likes to say that diagramming sentences is the only time English looks like math. "Only it's better than math," she said. "Math only has one right answer. Here, you can ask 'is it an adverb, adjective, or noun?' 'Linking, transitive, or intransitive?' And the answer is ... yes! Everything's right!"
It's deceptively simple, which is only part of its allure, if you ask me. You have your subject, Jeff. Your verb, pleaded. Your ... innocent. What is that? First someone said it was functioning as a noun. It's a condition, a state, an idea. He entered a plea of innocent. That would make pleaded a transitive verb. It was also said that innocent could be seen as an adverb, added to the--intransitive in this case--verb pleaded. Then, it was said that innocent could be an adjective to describe Jeff, which would make it a linking verb!
Our teacher likes to say that diagramming sentences is the only time English looks like math. "Only it's better than math," she said. "Math only has one right answer. Here, you can ask 'is it an adverb, adjective, or noun?' 'Linking, transitive, or intransitive?' And the answer is ... yes! Everything's right!"