Michael Cysouw

@cysouw.bsky.social

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Graphical Grammar: a history of visual analysis of syntactic structure before Chomsky and Tesnière Radical-open-access manuscript in progress: https://cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/

"System of significant symbols" from Greene (1874), here showing an analysis of a quotation from William Prescott "The Conquest of Mexico":

I: Cortez received this remonstrance with the embarrassed air of one by whom it was altogether unexpected.
II: He modestly requested time for deliberation, and promised to give his answer on the following day.
III: At the time appointed he called his troops together, and made them a brief address.
IV: He concluded by declaring his willingness to take measures for settling in the country.

Formula for a sentence from Cruttenden (1859/1860) with multiple subordination. Roughly speaking, X=agent, Y=predicate, Z=patient. This formula represents the following sentence:

Mr. Webster once replied to a gentleman, who pressed him to speak on a subject of a great importance; "The subject interests me deeply, but I have not time."

Step 1, 4 and 5 from the 6-step syntactic analysis of Buckham (1881). The first step is from Gibbs, the fourth from Greene, the fifth from Becker/Gibbs. The sentence analysed here is:

The daughter of the miller, who was a very poor man, went timidly to the king, as he sat in state, and while she stood before him in not a little fear a great shout arose from the people who had assembled to see the games and were becoming impatient at the long delay.

Notation of compound propositions from Gibbs (1858: 54) for the Latin quotation from Cicero: Non promissa servanda sunt ea, quae sint iis, quibus promisseris, inutilia.

Diagram for a quotation from Thomas Burbidge *The Daisy* as analysed by William Jevons (1870).

Scheme V from Meiklejohn (1887), which he says is the scheme prescribed by the Department for the scholarship examination"

"mapping out" a sentence from Meiklejohn (1882)

Meiklejohn (1866), probably inspired by Dalgleish (1865)

Meiklejohn (1862), probably inspired by Clark

Symbolic expression of a complex sentence from Bain (1863: 168). The notation with the plus symbols and the superscripts is a direct adaptation of the proposals of Findlater.

Analytic Notation for a quotation from Shakespeare's *Henry VI* as used in the grammar of Dalgleish (1865)

Analysis of multiple subordination from Charles Mason (1870) using hierarchical brackets and letter-codes. The idea of the letter codes is from Bain (who had it from Findlater), but Mason adds a distinction between complement clauses (no dash), relative clause (single dash) and adverbial clause (double dash). Also: for each clause the complete pathway of subordination is repeated in these codes.

Notation "after the manner of algebraists" as introduced by Andrew Findlater in 1857. This is clearly inspired by the German tradition of *Periodenbilder*, but it remains unclear which author has influenced Findlater.

Analysis by Morell (1852) of a complex sentence by separating all clauses and indicating the hierarchical structure by referencing the indices. This method is directly inspired by Abraham Heussler and indirectly by Ferdinand Becker.

Analysis of a quotation by Hugh Blair from the grammar of William Livingston. The numbers refer to grammatical rules. Government is indicated by arches above, while concord is indicated by arches below. However, the arches in this example are more an exemplary than an exhaustive analysis.

Analysis of the opening lines of the second act of the play Douglas (1756) by John Home as found in *The juvenile instructor* by Albert Picket. The numbers refer to syntactical rules and the lines indicate government (arches) and agreement/conjunction (straight lines)

tree in a grammar book

Analysis of a complex sentence with multiple embedded clauses from Heußler (1870), though the first version has to be from the 1840s (because it is cited by John Morell in 1852).

Analysis "in the form of a tree" from Doherty (1841: 134)

*tújiě fǎ* (圖解法) from Li Jinxi (1924). In this grammar of Chinese he uses US-style diagramming for the analysis of Chinese. This example is from a large fold-out sheet:

阿菊的⽗親是給⼈家做零僱的僕役的。
Aju's father worked as a servant for others on a small scale.

⼈家有喜事, 喪‍事, 僱他去: 上賓客們的菜, 伺候賓客們的茶‍⽔煙‍⽕；
he was hired to serve food and tea and tobacco to guests at weddings and funerals;

此外還當碼頭上起貨落貨的脚夫。
in addition, he also worked as a porter at the docks, loading and unloading.

Revised illustration of the example from Foerster & Steadman (1919) as found in a Chinese grammar by Li Jinxi (1924). The analysis of the main and subordinate clauses is quoted verbatim from Foerster & Steadman. Note that the relative order and the secondary subordination is now accurately depicted.

1. The child filled us with horror.
a. Standing there looking at a pebble.
b. Quite motionless.
c. Apparently doomed.
d. Such that some of us turned pale as death.
2. Suddenly we saw a man in a dark doorway.
a. Whom we hadn't noticed before.
b. Though he had doubtless been there right along.
c. Coming out like a flash.
d. Who blocked the way.
3. It was Martin.

Tree diagram from Foerster & Steadman (1919) for the sentence:

Standing there looking at a pebble, quite motionless, and apparently doomed, the child filled us with such horror that some of us turned pale as death; but suddenly we saw a man in a dark doorway, whom we hadn’t noticed before (though he had doubtless been there right along) and who, coming out like a flash, blocked the way – it was Martin!

Unfortunately, their graphical representation is only a rough approximation of the grammatical structure of the sentence.

Unexplained visual sentence analysis from Brown (1839). The big puzzle pieces seem to refer to different parts of speech, approx. A=conjunction/preposition, B=article, D=adjective, F=subject, H=finite verb, O=non-finite verb, P=adverb, Q=quantifier, X=Object

Hierarchical structure by interlocking blocks from Brown's *Syntascope* (1839)

Highly detailed grammatical annotation for French from Vaïsse (1839).

Basic hierarchical sentence analysis from Bébian (1827: 116). The object of the main clause is indicated by the "3", which itself has its own syntactic structure below the line as indicated by the numbers 1 and 2. The numbers are unfortunately not consistently used in this examples (i.e. some words are unmarked, though Bébian's system clearly provides for numbers)

Derivation of a relative clause from a regular main clause structures from Sicard (1799: 206) in his *Cours d'instruction d'un sourd-muet*

Frontispiece from Barrett (1857), depicting the structural analysis of the first part of verse Hebrew 1:1 from the King James translation of the Bible:

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.

Simple constituency marking by William Hall (1849) in his *Encyclopedia of English grammar*. He calls this analysis *monology* following the work of Jame Brown (the grammarian).

"chain" of a sentence from Peirce (1839: 50). Note that "for gentleman in Utica" is a single constituent, so it is not really accurate to depict this as a single linear chain.

Analysis of *very high trees fell* from Brown (1840). The letters represent the words: a=trees, b=fell, c=high, d=very, showing their hierarchical dependency through the branching. The reason for the inclusion of the number 5 is unclear.

*Satzbild* by Rahn & Pfleiderer (1953) for a long and complex German sentence. The analysis is way to simple to uncover the complex structure of the example:

Er wußte wohl, daß er von diesem Leben nicht mehr viel zu erwarten hatte, und war entschlossen, es wegzuwerfen, wenn er damit den Menschen dienen konnte; aber wer die bewundernswerte Sorgfalt seiner Arbeit sah, konnte nicht auf den Gedanken kommen, dieser Mann habe mit dem Leben abgeschlossen, und wenn er durch die Gassen des Städtchens schritt, bot er mit seinem gebräunten Antlitz, seinen fröhlich lachenden Augen und seinem aufrechten Gang eher das Bild eines Jünglings, der an der Schwelle des Lebens steht, als das eines Mannes, gegen den der Tod schon die Hand ausreckt.

analyse logique from Lanusse & Yvon (1923: 227) for the following sentence (which is a nice sign of the times):

Puisque nos soldats, pendant qu’ils soutenaient contre les Allemands des luttes si cruelles, ont montré que les Français sont doués des plus belles qualités militaires, il est légitime que nous ayons confiance dans l’avenir de notre pays; mais il est nécessaire que nous pratiquions dans la paix les vertus de discipline dont les combattants nous ont donné l’exemple.

The arrow in the top middle is wrong: it should be reversed, pointing from the main clauses 4+6 to the subordinate clause 1. All other arrows point towards the subordinate clause.

Arête de poisson ‘fishbone diagram’ from Georges Galichet (1947: 164) for an examples from La Fontaine:

Un mourant qui comptait plus de cent ans de vie,
se plaignait à la Mort, que précipitamment
elle le contraignait de partir tout à l’heure.

Syntactic analysis by Mikuš (1952), including a full set of rewrite rules (bottom), distinguishing head (T) from dependent (T'). Endpoints of the recursion are printed in italics. The resulting structure is given here using hierarchical brackets, but Mikuš uses various other graphical representations of this structure

graphical analysis by Bonnard (1950) of a sentence from a fable of Fontaine:

A l’heure dite, il courut au logis
De la Cigogne son hôtesse;
Loua très fort sa politesse;
Trouva le dîner cuit à point.

graphical analysis from Damourette & Pichon (1933: 185) for a sentence from Voltaire *L'Orphelin de la Chine*. Inexplicably, the graphic replaces the verbform "offre" with "est offrant" and wrongfully places the copula "est" in the subject-box.

Autour de notre enceinte, une garde terrible
Aux peuples consternés offre de toutes part
Un rempart hérissé de piques et de dards.

Satzbild from the *Grammatik der deutschen Sprache* by Griesbach & Schulze (1960). Illustrated here is a syntactic analysis of the sentence "Wenn du mir versprichst, daß du mir das Geld wiedergibst, sobald dir dein Vater den Scheck geschickt hat, kann ich dir die 100 Mark geben, obwohl ich noch mindestens zwei Wochen warten muß, bis ich mein nächstes Gehalt bekomme."

Syntactic analysis of Cicero by Kinker (1817).

The sentence analysed here is "Quare, quoniam id, quod est primum atque hujus Imperii disciplinaeque maiorum proprium est, facere nondum audeo, faciam id, quod est ad severitatem lenius, ad communem salutem utilius. Nam si te interfici jussero, residebit in republica reliqua conjuratorum manus: sin tu (quod te jam dudum hortor) exieris; exhaurietur ex urbe tuorum comitum magna et perniciosa sentina reipublicae."

The analysis has four levels of embedding, starting with hebrew letters, then latin capitals, then latin lowercase letters and finally greek lowercase letters. For details of Kinker's analysis, follow the link in the post.

Schéma from Maurice Grevisse (1966: 284) for the sentence *Cet homme, digne qu’on le confonde, vit d’intrigues.*
‘This man, worthy of being exposed, lives by intrigue.’

Dependency-like structure from Senillosa (1817), to be read from bottom left to top right. The sentence consists of five clauses, which are all reformulated as relative clauses, crossing at the head noun they refer to. The original sentence analysed here is "La ciencia y la virtud son los dos bienes que los vayvenes de la fortuna injusta no disipáron nunca."

Graphical analysis by Wilhelm Wundt of a sentence from Goethe's *Werder*: Als er sich den Vorwurf sehr zu Herzen zu nehmen schien (a⏜b), und immer aufs neue beteuerte (c), daß er gewiß gern mitteile (d), gern für Freunde tätig sei (e), so empfand sie (A⏜B), daß sie sein zartes Gemüt verletzt habe (a1⏜b1), und sie fühlte sich als seine Schuldnerin (A⏜D).

Graphical analysis of a complex sentence by Polivanov (1873). This graphic represents a sentence from a letter from N.M. Karamzin:

[А] Улицы прямы, широки и хорошо вымощены, а [Б] вь срединѣ проведены глубокіе каналы, [а] вь которыхь сь шумомь течеть вода, [а'] уносящая сь собою всю нечистоту иаь города, и [б'] сверхь того весьма полезная ву случаѣ ножара.

[А] The streets are straight, wide and well paved, and [Б] in the middle there are deep canals, [а] into which water flows noisily, [а'] carrying away with it all the sewage from the city, and [б'] moreover being very useful in case of a fire.

Hierarchical analysis of the internal structure of the sentence "The Earth rotates around its axis every twenty-four hours" by Gebauer (1890)

Graphical sentence analysis from Paul (1910) for the sentence:

Am Ufer des Ganges verschlang heute ein riesiger Alligator wutschnaubend einen braunen Inder.

Again: somebody should write a book about the strange examples used by linguists!

Exercise from Müllener (1885) to construct a complex sentence based on the simple clauses to the left and the symbolic representation to the right. The intended results is: Um seine Brust zu stärken, ging er täglich die steilsten Berge hinan; oder er trat an das Ufer des Meeres, wo die Wogen ein großes Gebrause machten, und suchte mit seiner Stimme das Getöse zu übertönen.

strongly simplified *Periodenbild* as used by Martin Hattala (1857) for the sentence: Lépe činí ten, kdo těží s mále‑m, stoje věrně na své postati, velký‑t' je, bud' sluhou nebo králem. ('He does better, who makes do with little, standing true to his position, even if he is great, whether he is a servant or a king.')

"representation in letters" from Kunz (1859) for the Czech Poem "Lépe činí ten, kdo těží s málem, stoje věrně na své postati velkýt' je, bud' sluhou nebo králem."

*Periodenbild* from Horn (1837: 313) for the sentence: [A] Wißt ihr denn, [a] ob der kleine Knabe, [α] der neben euch Blumen zerreißt [β] und mit den Blättern spielt, [a] nicht einst als Kriegsgott in einem stürmischen Welttheile aussteigen [b] und mit den Stürmen spielen werde?

Very early dependency tree from Zikmund (1863) for Czech

Graphical display of sentence structures from Peshkovsky's third edition of *Русскій синтаксисъ въ научномъ освѣщеніи* (‘Russian syntax in scientific education’) from 1928. The actual sentences displayed here can be found here: https://cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#ex5.25

Schema of Kryuchkov & Svetlaev (1936, probably originally published in 1925), also cited by Tesnière (1959: 15 fn.1) as an influence on his stemmata. The sentence analysed here is *Классовый враг бешено сопротивляется социалистическому наступлению* which means *The class enemy is furiously resisting the socialist offensive*. By this point in time the Russian revolution has arrived in grammatical textbooks!

*Графическимь способомь* 'graphical method' from Smirnovsky (1884)

graphical analysis of a single-clause sentence from Usakov, Smirnova & Nikolajevna (1926)

dependency like схемы 'schema' from Barkhudarov (1938). The direction of the dependency lines indicates the order of the dependent relative to its head.

Dependency tree from Zeltser & Vvedensky (1925) in which the words are interpreted as the edges, not as the nodes.