After trying it out with a couple of jawbreaking sentences from Proust, which, curiously, seemed to resemble iguanas when diagrammed, it was all but inevitable.
It took on Proustian monsters with ease...
...so naturally, I wanted to give it a sentence from Finnegans Wake! After all, what would the application decide was the subject? the verb?
So I gave it the following:
"The whool of the whaal in the wheel of the whorl of the Boubou from Bourneum has thus come to taon!), and with tambarins and cantoridettes soturning around his eggshill rockcoach their dance McCaper in retrophoebia, beck from bulk, like fantastic disossed and jenny aprils, to the ra, the ra, the ra, the ra, langsome heels and langsome toesis, attended to by a mutter and doffer duffmatt baxingmotch and a myrmidins of pszozlers pszinging Satyr's Caudledayed Nice and Hombly,
Dombly Sod We Awhile but Ho, Time Timeagen, Wake!"
It blithely gave me the following. Not a bad effort at that:
 |
| Sentence diagram of a sentence in Finnegans Wake on page 415. Click for full diagram. |
You can play around with it at: https://foxtype.com/sentence-tree
Uh oh, I just realized that there is a dangling parenthesis, so the sentence ACTUALLY STARTS ON THE PREVIOUS PAGE. So there are several sentences in parenthesis embedded in the surrounding sentence, so actually I have to diagram
He would of curse melissciously, by his fore feelhers, flexors, contractors, depressors and extensors, lamely, harry me, marry me, bury me, bind me, till she was puce for shame and allso fourmish her in Spinner's housery at the earthsbest schoppinhour so summery as his cottage, which was cald fourmillierly Tingsomingenting, groped up. Or, if he was always striking up funny funereels with Bester farther Zeuts, the Aged One, With all his wigeared corollas, albedinous and oldbuoyant, inscythe his elytrical wormcasket and Dehlia and Peonia, his druping nymphs, bewheedling him, compound eyes on hornitosehead, and Auld Letty Plussiboots to scratch his cacumen and cackle his tramsitus, diva deborah (seven bolls of sapo, a lick of lime, two spurts of fussfor, threefurts of sulph, a shake o'shouker, doze grains of migniss and a mesfull of midcap pitchies. The whool of the whaal in the wheel of the whorl of the Boubou from Bourneum has thus come to taon!), and with tambarins and cantoridettes soturning around his eggshill rockcoach their dance McCaper in retrophoebia, beck from bulk, like fantastic disossed and jenny aprils, to the ra, the ra, the ra, the ra, langsome heels and langsome toesis, attended to by a mutter and doffer duffmatt baxingmotch and a myrmidins of pszozlers pszinging Satyr's Caudledayed Nice and Hombly,
Dombly Sod We Awhile but Ho, Time Timeagen, Wake!
OK, I have no idea if this will even work... Here goes...
... it took a few seconds... it almost died... but it came up with this:
 |
| Click for full diagram. |
Posts
You could argue that the sentence properly starts with "Or", but it really functions like "; or" rather than ". Or", for the sake of diagramming. But of course you noticed that!
ReplyDeleteAlso click on the image to get the full extent!
ReplyDeleteVery fun, Ed. Of course, I don't think the difficulty with the Wake is generally in distinguishing what part of the sentence a word is, it's what the word actually means.Or how many things it does.
ReplyDelete