Diagramming sentences

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Diagramming sentences
Mark Liberman, Language Log, April 14, 2013
The problem with sentences like "Man arrested with fake CIA badge" is that it suggests the fake CIA badge was used to make the arrest. Obviously there's a problem of ambiguity here, which is corrected with proper grammar. But how do we represent, and subsequently teach, the correct grammar? For decades, the Reed-Kellogg system has been used in schools; it diagrams the same basic sentence elements that might be found in, say, phrase structure rules. More...