SYNTAX: EXERCISE 12

Directions:

Here is a sentence from Robert Frost's poem "Come In." In this poem, the speaker is outdoors at dusk, and he hears a thrush calling from the dark woods. The speaker imagines that the thrush is calling him to come into the woods, and the poem ends with the speaker's decision not to accept the imagined invitation. The speaker says, "I was out for stars," and so "I would not come in. / I meant not even if asked, / And I hadn't been."

The last sentence of the poem appears below with checkboxes over each word.  Decide where you would make your first cut if you were diagramming the syntactical structure of this sentence.  That is, decide what the Immediate Constituents (ICs) of the sentence are.

Mark the first IC as follows.  Start by positioning the mouse pointer over the checkbox that belongs to the first word in the sentence (I).   Check the box over I by clicking once with the mouse.  Then put checkmarks in  the boxes over all of the other words that belong to the same IC as I.  Leave the boxes over the other words unchecked.

If you check a box and then change your mind, you can remove the checkmark by clicking on the box again.

When you have finished checking the appropriate boxes, click on the "GO" button.
 

meant  not  even  if  asked,  and  had  n't  been. 


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