Thalia Field & Abigail Lang

Machine for
Sentences

Look through the literary order and discover the logical order, George is told.

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences

George wonders whether to diagram according to order of speech, or according to offices and relations.

George experiments with the X-bar theory.

Parse: ‘The idea rose.’

George experiments with the "balloon" method of depicting grammar. Higher than the sky. Somewhat fallen.

Parse: ‘Green leaves yellow.’

George thus learns what the literary order really is, and sees that this may be varied indefinitely, so long as the logical relations are kept clear.

George ponders on universal grammar and the upright posture.

(George wishes he could discuss disambiguation with Jacob Delafon—the philosopher, not the faucet.)

After a heavy meal, George falls asleep in the shade of a camphor-tree. He wakes up to furious sleep ideas, green & colorless.

George decides to build a sentence diagram in a form of a tree house:

GEORGE’S TREE HOUSE begins with a horizontal line and the trap opens on the left, the roof on the right, separated by a vertical bar extending through the base. The shaft permits or precludes other house elements to complete the roof. The shaft and its target, when present, separate by a line. If the wheel is indirect, the line is vertical. If the wheel is a roof cog or prong, the line looks like a backslash (V) sloping toward the trap.

Wheels of the trap, roof, or crane are placed below the base line. Arrowed devices are also placed beneath the mechanism they branch from; the arrow goes on a slanted line and the slanted line leads to a horizontal line on which the target of the arrow is placed.

Arrowed devices consist of two lines: the arrow itself is drawn just as a prong or tooth would be—hanging down below the forerunner—and the match is drawn protruding horizontally from a point near the bottom of the line.

Gertrude is placed on a “staircase,” which is then on a triangle base and a line going up to the staircase. The staircase is two steps, and Gertrude should be placed onto it diagonally, as if she were resting full length on the stairs.

The Dangling Else or Enemy is placed on a floating line separate to the rest of the tree house.