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How do you diagram a sentence that has a nominal phrase that is described by an adjective using the Reed-Kellogg system?

English Language & Usage Asked by plexi on February 6, 2021

I have the following sentence:

I hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend.

My understanding is that "holiday weekend" is a compound noun nominal phrase, since it would be incorrect to say "a nice and holiday weekend," or "a holiday nice weekend." "Nice" is specifying what kind of "holiday weekend" it was.

But how would you diagram this sentence using the Reed-Kellogg system? I believe that this is how you would diagram the sentence without the nominal phrase:

I hope everyone had a nice weekend.

enter image description here

but I’m at a loss as to how you would diagram it with the nominal phrase, and I can’t seem to find any examples.

One Answer

I hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend.

"Holiday weekend" is not a compound noun, but a syntactic construction: a nominal with "weekend" as head and the noun "holiday" as modifier. "Nice" then modifies the nominal "holiday weekend" to give the meaning "holiday that is nice by the standards normally expected of holiday weekends".

Incidentally, the Reed-Kellogg system of diagramming has been intellectually bankrupt for over 100 years, and (to the best of my knowledge) has never been used in the UK. The diagram fails to show the syntactic structure and the function of each constituent.

If you really must use the Reed-Kellogg diagram, the best you can do is add the modifier "holiday" to the same line as "nice".

Edit: Below is more conventional tree diagram, from which it is clear that "nice" modifies the nominal "holiday weekend".

enter image description here

Answered by BillJ on February 6, 2021

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