Lesson 4: Non-Verbal Modifiers
Adding on Prepositional Phrases
Adding to The Grand List of Questions
Prepositional phrases are not that difficult to identify. However, in a complicated sentence, they can add confusion. So it is helpful to section them off visually and deal with them separately. Let’s add them to our Grand List of Questions.
The Grand List of Questions (for Sentence Parsing)
1. Are there any prepositional phrases, genitives, or vocatives? ...
2. What are the verbs?
For each verb, determine the sentence pattern...
3. What is the subject?
4. Is the verb “to be/become/seem,” or is there a word after the verb that renames or describes the subject?
Yes = linking verb. Find the PN/A.
5. Is there a direct object?
Yes = transitive verb. Is there an OCN/A? Is there an IO?
No = intransitive verb.
6. Are there any adjectives, adverbs, or appositives?
7. ...
You may notice that we have also added vocatives (which you have already learned) and genitives (coming later this lesson) to question number one. Those three items (and one more to be added in lesson 5) are the easiest to spot when first approaching a sentence. Hence, they are number one! We have also added Is there an IO? to number five, which you will learn about in the next step.
Parsing Prepositional Phrases
You can see that “with” is the preposition (labeled Prep) and “Jenny” is the object of the preposition (labeled OP).
“On” is the preposition and “chair” is the OP. What are “the” and “blue” doing? “The” is an article and goes with chair, and “blue” is an adjective describing the chair. It is worth pointing out that there is no direct object in this sentence! Nothing is receiving the action of sat; rather, we are given a prepositional phrase about where Jenny sat. Therefore, “sat” is an intransitive verb.
This sentence has two prepositional phrases in it. The first is “next to Jenny,” and the second is “under the fan.” For the first phrase, we have a preposition made up of two words: “next to.” Both words are necessary to give the meaning of the preposition, and so we consider it one preposition, in the same way that we say that “woke up” is one verb. “Jenny” is the OP for “next to.” Then we have the preposition “under” and its OP, “fan.” And once again, despite there being a lot of words in the sentence and multiple nouns, the verb “sat” is intransitive.
As you can see from this last example, a single sentence can have multiple prepositional phrases, and those phrases can be located…well, almost anywhere. Prepositional phrases are quite flexible!
The Non-Verbal Shelf
This is the non-verbal shelf on the diagramming module. The non-verbal shelf is for prepositional phrases and genitives (taught later this lesson), which are “non-verbal” as we explained in the last step—not having a verb. The non-verbal shelf attaches under the shelf of the noun/verb that the non-verbal is modifying. What about the OP? The object of the preposition goes on our object shelf, attached next to the non-verbal shelf. Let’s diagram our coffee sentences.
As we mentioned, prepositional phrases usually act adverbially. The coffee isn’t with Jenny, but Paul is drinking with Jenny, so we attach the non-verbal shelf to the verb that is being modified. In general, intransitive and transitive verbs will have adverbial prepositional phrases.
The fact that “sat” is an intransitive verb is much more clear in the diagram than it is just reading the sentence as text.
In our third sentence, you can see how to diagram when one verb/noun has multiple prepositional phrases attached to it. A non-verbal shelf can be attached to the corner of another non-verbal shelf to “stack” prepositional phrases.