Directions:

Here is a sentence 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.

The analysis of this particular sentence begins with a problem. Although the The . . . , the construction exemplified here is familiar in English, is not intuitively obvious how this construction should be diagrammed. We normally think of the as an article, and not as a conjunction. A study of the history of this construction shows, however, that it derives from an Old English construction in which the word that eventually became the was used much like a coordinating conjunction. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the most perspicuous way to treat the The . . . , the construction is to consider it as functioning much like the other paired coordinating conjunctions in English: either . . . or, neither . . . nor, both . . . and, not only . . . but also. See "Diagramming Double Coordinators."

Since a coordinating conjunction is not, strictly speaking, part of either of the ICs it connects, we will not begin the analysis of this sentence by checking all of the words that belong to the same IC as the initial The. The does not belong to any IC, when it serves as a coordinating conjunction.

Therefore, mark the first IC as follows.  Start by positioning the mouse pointer over the checkbox that belongs to the second word in the sentence (closer).   Check the box over closer 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 closer.  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.
 

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