INTRO

In 1877, Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg published the first method to analyze language representation in the book called “Higher lessons in English” which has been updated with recent studies of grammar upon so far.

WHAT’S A SYNTAX DIAGRAM?

Syntax is the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence. It studies how to combine words in order to create acceptable sentences.

In English the basic syntactic structure is: Subjet + verb which could be complemented with modifiers such as adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, relative clauses, among others.

A diagram is a pictorical representation of the syntax of a language. It is a map, a tool that allows language teachers, especially teachers of English find out how their students are associating their ideas within the sentence. Other name that reed Kellogg’s diagrams have is “syntax trees” because its form is very similar to a tree that branches out.

Although many people have questioned its use, saying that there are a lot of better ways of representing language structures, an evident merit is the fact that it really helps the student to look through the language and discover its logical order. The diagrams drive the students to a more researching analysis of the sentence and also the possibility to make a decision based on a meaningful association. In addition, the students can understand that there is a wide variety of ways of expressing the same idea in a sentence. You can change the word order in the sentence as long as the ideas are kept clear and comprehensible.