Re: english grammar

[freed from spam filter -rrs]

Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 18:55:37 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <3CA4FF15.5040606@isr.umd.edu>
From: Scott Selberg <selberg@isr.umd.edu>
To: www-rdf-comments@w3.org

Hi Oliver, I agree with you that the grammer is
a bit askew in the primer but I'm not sure I
agree with your analysis.

I'm just trying to learn what RDF is, and I believe
that this sentence is steering me down the wrong road.
I feel, therefore, that it is important to resolve
the grammatical issues.

The example in question is:

The creator of http://somewhere is John Smith.

if we rewrite it as, A of B is C.  
    A, The creator, is the subject
    'is' is the predicate or verb
         (a linking verb at that)
    C, John Smith, is the subjective complement
         (had the verb been a transitive one,
         this would be the direct object)
    'of B', 'of http://somewhere', is a prepositional
         phrase used as an adjective describing A

The proper graph of this sentence should look like

                              --is--
                              |    |
     A  --is--   C          A,C-----
      \         /            |
       \       /             |
    created created   or  created   
         \   /               |
          \ /                |
           B                 B


Perhaps a better example sentence would be:

John Smith   created   http://somewhere.
-subject--   -verb--   --object---------


-Scott Selberg

Received on Sunday, 31 March 2002 13:57:58 UTC