March 20, 2015

"It is inside that nondescript alumni gym where Frankie Kaminsky — the self-described goofball who still remembers the combination of his high school locker (1-17-49)..."

"... and who tried to catch falling confetti on his tongue like a 7-foot-tall kid seeing snow for the first time after Wisconsin’s Big Ten tournament championship victory — became Frank the Tank, the polished senior scoring, rebounding and assist machine determined to lead the Badgers to a second straight Final Four."

That's just one sentence — diagram it! — in a long NYT article by Jeff Arnold titled "Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky Takes Pride in Growing Up."

(Go Badgers.)

32 comments:

rhhardin said...

subj "became" obj

Patrick said...

Frank and Wisconsin will defeat KY. Yoy heard it here first.

Heartless Aztec said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MadisonMan said...

Is there a diagramming website/app?

Heartless Aztec said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rhhardin said...

Diagramming, actually, doesn't work. The semantics don't at all follow the syntax.

rhhardin said...

Diagramming, actually, doesn't work. The semantics don't at all follow the syntax.

rhhardin said...

(why do comments sometimes double-post?)

Example, "For him to say that diagramming works is wrong."

You'd diagram "for" as a preposition with object "him," but semantically "for obj to" is a marker that "obj" is the subject of a to-infinitive.

It has nothing to do with subordination or anything about prepositions.

traditionalguy said...

But Wisconsin doesn't have a coach who will injure his Achilles is celebrating a win, one week and fall off his stool celebrating a winning shot by his son the next week. It's the intangibles that count.

Interestingly the coach is a black man from Indiana who is married to a red headed lady who have two beautiful children including that three pointer hitting with 2 seconds left son.

Atlanta is comfortably interracial because it chose to be.

paminwi said...

Let's talk about Frank and how he didn't get a trophy every tine he played just because he showed up. This is about a young man who got squashed down a few times and learned to keep on, keeping on!

Any new parents willing to learn something from that part of the story?

(And besides, who gives a shit about diagramming sentences? You are all so willing to let Althouse change the subject from a story about a young man to something ridiculous! 9 comments - only 1 about basketball.)

rhhardin said...

Basketball is more interesting than you'd think, once you look at syntax.

You'd think that "for him to say..." would have "him" in the objective case because it's the object of "for," where the semantic rule in fact is that subjects of nonfinite verbs go in the objective case, and it has nothing to do with the preposition.

"Him thinking that is wrong," another example.

rhhardin said...

It comes from indirect statement in Latin. The subject is in the objective case.

Ann Althouse said...

"(And besides, who gives a shit about diagramming sentences? You are all so willing to let Althouse change the subject from a story about a young man to something ridiculous! 9 comments - only 1 about basketball.)"

Because there's just not enough talk about basketball these days.

Titus said...

My dad and mom always comment about how many white players UW Basketball teams always seem to have compared to other college teams.

Original Mike said...

I still remember my locker number and I'm a lot older than Frank.

Ann Althouse said...

Okay, I'll say something about basketball. I watch (while reading or doing crosswords) with Meade, and I like to make observations about things I don't like about basketball. My new one is that they bring chairs out onto the field of play during time outs so they can sit and talk. They never bring chairs out in baseball or football. Chairs! Ridiculous!

Titus said...

Just now, in the breakfast room, a guy who got a Phd in at Wisconsin said he knows a manager for the team.

He said that coach Ryan drinks beer and smokes cigarettes before the games in the hotel....isn't that weird?

He said there are two assistant coaches that basically make all the calls.

Original Mike said...

"My dad and mom always comment about how many white players UW Basketball teams always seem to have compared to other college teams."

And no tattoos.

Gahrie said...

Hell at least half the teachers at the high school where I teach can't diagram sentences.

MadisonMan said...

They never bring chairs out in baseball or football. Chairs! Ridiculous!

Some short coach got tired of looking up at his players while talking. That's my guess/

Heartless Aztec said...

7 diagramming comments now. I blame the exclamation point following "Diagram this".

Dave D said...

Ann: Maybe they need the chairs so the pint sized coaches can talk face-to-face with the towering players in the huddle? Anyway, this Spartan fan is rooting heavily for the Badgers to win it all! Go Big 10!

MadisonMan said...

surfed, would you rather we be diagramming basketball plays?

Tank said...

Go Tank !!!

Heartless Aztec said...

@MadisonMan - Coached basketball off and on for a few decades at the Jr High/Sr High level. I can take or leave it. Loved coaching the surf team (numerous Eastern Surfing Association champions) till school board lawyers put a stop to it. Something about sharks, drowning and the like.

Ann Althouse said...

" till school board lawyers put a stop to it. Something about sharks..."

Takes one to know one, they say.

MadisonMan said...

Wait -- you could be on the surf team in High School? That sounds awesome! (I hope it was a fall sport in the northeast though). I'll have to look that up -- what were you judged on? Distance? Flair?

The landlocked kids miss out!

Heartless Aztec said...

California high schools still have surf teams. Jeff Spicoli still lives. Different criteria for different lengths of boards and the time frame they inhabit. Longboards for length of ride and time spent on the nose of the boards. Short modern quad fins and three fin thrusters for rotations maneuvers, vertical and airborne transistions from one part of the wave to another. Flair and style for sure. Size and shape of wave also counts. Plus all the teenage girls and their mothers are hanging out in less than their underwear. I know that sounds sexist but there you have it. Hunky young surfer dudes for that crew of girls with their trunks slung low on the hips. The beach and a good swell with groomed offshore wind waves beats a sweaty locker room everytime.

Sigivald said...

Diagramming. How quaint.

I'm more with rhhardin on this one.

(Also, I forgot my locker number the second I left High School.)

Heartless Aztec said...

I hear an echo. I swear it wasn't me Sister Dominique! Be careful not to incur the Professor's wrath from the front of the classroom.

Sammy Finkelman said...

rhhardin said...
subj "became" obj

---------------------------

Actually, that's wrong.

The subject is "it"
the verb is "is"
The drect object is "inside that...gym, where....

And what you have there is an estended description and history of the gym.

If, however, the sentence didn't end where it did, and you really expect it not to end there, and something were to to follow the end of the sentence -- if, taht is, the word "that" and a sentence followed "straight Final Four" then, the verb after the word "that" would be the verb, and then whole sentence till then an adjectival phrase.

Sammy Finkelman said...

"became" is not the verb.

The verb is "is" -the subject is "it" and the gym is the object.

All the rest is explanatory phrases.

But if the word "that," and what could then be a whole second complete sentence after that, appeared after the end of the sentence, then the verb in that second sentence would be the verb.

The verb can come before or after "became" but "became" cannot be the verb in that sentence.