Another day, another giant leap for mankind.

[cosmolinguist]

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!"

Comments

Until...

[comradexavier.livejournal.com]

Everything's right only until I select something to be the one right answer. You should know that by now.

Re: Until...

[scarlett-harlot.livejournal.com]

Whoah...me too *looks impressed*.
...and I thought it was just me.

Re: Until...

[cosmolinguist]

comradexavier's egotism and megalomaniacal tendencies are a force to be reckoned with. :-)

Re: Until...

[scarlett-harlot.livejournal.com]

Eeep *directs awed looks in her direction* :P

Alas, my own egotism and megalomaniacal tendencies have yet to reach their full potential. Or so I'd hope. If this is as good as they get, I'm in trouble :/

[cosmolinguist]

Hmm, I think you just called my boyfriend a 'her' ... :-D

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

In that sentence, innocent is a noun.

Better than math... indeed.... really...

[parakleta.livejournal.com]

bah...

The one right answer is what it's all about... what's the point if there is multiple answers, that's just sloppy. Better than math. Trust an english teacher to come up with something as illogical as that.

:)

Like the whole i before e unless after c, or whenever else we feel like messing with you and just swapping them around. At least maths follows the rules.

And Webmistress, I don't think it's an ugly word, it sounds kind of kinky... :)

Better than math! Indeed! Really! :-D

[cosmolinguist]

Yes, perhaps I just don't have the mentality necessary to think "Webmistress" is interesting. :-)

Oh, and I think you meant "what's the point if there are multiple answers." ::laughs a grammar nerd laugh and runs away before you can hit her::

Webmistress...

[parakleta.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about it actually, and I think I know what it is...

It's the combination of the imagery of a dominatrix that comes from female spiders and the whole leather clad mistress thing, and a geek girl.

So what we have is a spunky, firey passionate, confident, in-control type geek girl. Who looks good in leather. The kind of girl that's entirely too much for most geek guys to handle, but loves taking them for a ride, out of which they will stagger bewildered, dizzy and happy. Kinda like Acid Burn in Hackers. Kinda. But not entirely.

I have this image in my mind that's like 'Woah' (in the way only Keanu can say it) of a girl that's the kind I envy other people having, but don't actually want for myself, because I know it's more than I can handle.

I think I may have said too much already...

Re: Webmistress...

[cosmolinguist]

No, no. Do not worry. I find it most amusing. I'm sure you're not the only person to think these kinds of things, just the only one brave enough to say them. :-D

P.S.

[cosmolinguist]

I was just thinking of Angelina Jolie and Hackers earlier today--for no apparent reason, I mean, I was listening to people in my history class babble about World War I battles--and now you've just reminded my brain that I'd like to see that. There are several factors keeping this from happening in the near future--the biggest one being that, while I have a new TV, my DVD player and VCR are a couple hundred miles away for the indefinite future. I guess I'll just have to pine for them.

[autumnsshadow.livejournal.com]

Innocent, Jeff thinks he is, hmmm?

[textivore.livejournal.com]

No, his pleading suggests that he doesn't really think so at all. Smacks of desperation, you know.

[autumnsshadow.livejournal.com]

Was Jeff even accused of anything? If not, that might suggest that he's merely crazy...running around all day claiming he's innocent.

"Jeff pleaded insanity," may have been more fitting.

[textivore.livejournal.com]

Let x equal adverb . . . =)

Have you ever read any of The Deluxe Transitive Vampire?

[cosmolinguist]

I read my e-mail this morning and was confused by this vampire non-sequitur of yours ... but then I went to class. Grammar, of course. And we had a quiz today. The first sentence we had to diagram was "Lisa shakily stood still with all the stubborn opposition of her puny will." Which made people laugh. "I didn't come up with that sentence!" the professor said. "I should give credit; it's from a grammar book called The Transitive Vampire which has all kinds of cool and funny sentences.

I found that a rather odd coincidence. Sounds like an interesting book!

[textivore.livejournal.com]

It's a truly wonderful book! I highly reccomend it for people who want to polish their formal grammar knowledge but not to fall asleep while doing it.

Oh, and don't you realise vampires are never non-sequiturs? Especially transitive ones.

[cosmolinguist]

I should've known that a possible connection between grammar and vampires would seem totally logical to someone whose username is textivore.

(And now, for a non sequitur of my own, I really like that icon of yours.)

[uclacorey.livejournal.com]

there's something strangely alluring about grammar, and learning other languages definately opens your eyes to the minutiae of your own. Not to mention you learn a hell of a lot about a culture from its language...

and I think 'innocent' is direct object; it just sounds awkward because i'm assuming it's been shortened over the years

[cosmolinguist]

Grammar does have this interesting (and, I think, somewhat intangible) allure to it. Learning it in my native language is also quite a different experience from learning a foreign language; there it all comes from a textbook and a teacher, but English we all learn without thinking about it, so when we do it's amazing how much we know ... we just don't know why we know it. It's common for people in class to say "that's an adverb ... I'm not sure why, but it is!" And they're (usually) right.