Phaedrus
Banned
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2012
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- United States
- Current Location
- United States
Greetings,
Have you ever been astonished at the convoluted grammar of the opening sentence of "The Star-Spangled Banner"? It is actually the opening four lines of Francis Scott Key's poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry," the remaining two sentences of the anthem being the remainder of the first stanza of that poem:
O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
I thought it might be fun to try to diagram that sentence in the old-fashioned Reed-Kellogg way. (This is how I like to party on a Saturday night.) I'm tentatively pleased with what has emerged. Perhaps I'll make two more diagrams, of the remaining two sentences, at another time. Parsing the last two sentences is a breeze; singers never get lost once "And the rockets' red glare" is reached.
I think that the diagram clearly illustrates that the basic sentence, stripped of its expletives and (non-clausal) modifiers, adjectival and verbal, is this:
Can you see what we hailed, whose stripes and stars were streaming? (I.e.: Hey, can you see the flag?)
I parse the direct object of "see" as a free-relative clause (or fused relative construction, if you prefer), whose head ("what") is modified by a normal, nonrestrictive "whose"-relative clause, which itself contains a zero relative clause (modifying "ramparts"). Of course, we have modifiers galore all down the line. Below is my diagram. I welcome feedback, including any objections that may arise.
Cheers,
Phaedrus
Have you ever been astonished at the convoluted grammar of the opening sentence of "The Star-Spangled Banner"? It is actually the opening four lines of Francis Scott Key's poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry," the remaining two sentences of the anthem being the remainder of the first stanza of that poem:
O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
I thought it might be fun to try to diagram that sentence in the old-fashioned Reed-Kellogg way. (This is how I like to party on a Saturday night.) I'm tentatively pleased with what has emerged. Perhaps I'll make two more diagrams, of the remaining two sentences, at another time. Parsing the last two sentences is a breeze; singers never get lost once "And the rockets' red glare" is reached.
I think that the diagram clearly illustrates that the basic sentence, stripped of its expletives and (non-clausal) modifiers, adjectival and verbal, is this:
Can you see what we hailed, whose stripes and stars were streaming? (I.e.: Hey, can you see the flag?)
I parse the direct object of "see" as a free-relative clause (or fused relative construction, if you prefer), whose head ("what") is modified by a normal, nonrestrictive "whose"-relative clause, which itself contains a zero relative clause (modifying "ramparts"). Of course, we have modifiers galore all down the line. Below is my diagram. I welcome feedback, including any objections that may arise.
Cheers,
Phaedrus
