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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Samuel Stillman Greene (1810-1883), professor at Brown, wrote many popular grammatical textbooks. In 1874 (by then he was professor for astronomy) he used an algebraic system for sentence analysis which is more a puzzle than a useful didactic method IMHO. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.1

"System of significant symbols" from Greene (1874), here showing an analysis of a quotation from William Prescott "The Conquest of Mexico":

I: Cortez received this remonstrance with the embarrassed air of one by whom it was altogether unexpected.
II: He modestly requested time for deliberation, and promised to give his answer on the following day.
III: At the time appointed he called his troops together, and made them a brief address.
IV: He concluded by declaring his willingness to take measures for settling in the country.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

David Cruttenden (1816-1874) was an ambitious teacher from New York. In 1859/1860 he published two volumes on *the philosophy of sentential language*. His formulae deal with subordination, but only X=agent, Y=predicate and Z=patient are distinguished. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.4.8

Formula for a sentence from Cruttenden (1859/1860) with multiple subordination. Roughly speaking, X=agent, Y=predicate, Z=patient. This formula represents the following sentence:

Mr. Webster once replied to a gentleman, who pressed him to speak on a subject of a great importance; "The subject interests me deeply, but I have not time."

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Henry Buckham (1827-1914) left Vassar College after teaching there for its inaugural year and became a teacher's teacher in Buffalo. In *The analysis of sentences* (1881) he proposes a six-step syntactic analysis. The first step is a formula like Gibbs'. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.6

Step 1, 4 and 5 from the 6-step syntactic analysis of Buckham (1881). The first step is from Gibbs, the fourth from Greene, the fifth from Becker/Gibbs. The sentence analysed here is:

The daughter of the miller, who was a very poor man, went timidly to the king, as he sat in state, and while she stood before him in not a little fear a great shout arose from the people who had assembled to see the games and were becoming impatient at the long delay.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

William Alcott (1798-1859) in 1842 explained teachers how to use the blackboard. For grammar he proposes that "we may draw a curved line from the governing word to the word which is governed; or at least require a pupil to do it, in view of the rest." cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.4.6

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Josiah Willard Gibbs (1790-1861), professor at Yale and father of the more famous physicist with the same name, in 1857 introduced Becker's syntactic analysis to the USA. In 1858 he uses German-style *Periodenbilder* for the analysis of Latin sentences. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.2

Notation of compound propositions from Gibbs (1858: 54) for the Latin quotation from Cicero: Non promissa servanda sunt ea, quae sint iis, quibus promisseris, inutilia.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

William Jevons (1835-1882) was an economist and logician at Owens College in Manchester. In *Elementary lessons in logic* (1870) he has a chapter on *The logical analysis of sentences*. He uses diagrams, though they are structurally mostly unconstrained. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.12

Diagram for a quotation from Thomas Burbidge *The Daisy* as analysed by William Jevons (1870).

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

John Meiklejohn (1830-1902) was a prolific textbook author and in 1876 became professor of education at St. Andrews. He proposed many different kinds of syntactic analyses, synthesising earlier work. This one seems inspired by Clark. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.6

Meiklejohn (1862), probably inspired by Clark

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Alexander Bain (1818-1903), professor in Aberdeen, wrote an English grammar in 1863 as "There was not in existence any single grammar with the amount of fulness that was to be desired". He followed Morell and his friend Findlater for syntactic analysis. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.9

Symbolic expression of a complex sentence from Bain (1863: 168). The notation with the plus symbols and the superscripts is a direct adaptation of the proposals of Findlater.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Walter Scott Dalgleish (1834-1897) was a teacher, textbook author and publicist in Edinburgh. His grammatical analysis from 1865 is clearly influenced by Findlater, but he adds a hierarchical scheme for the "relations of clauses". cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.8

Analytic Notation for a quotation from Shakespeare's *Henry VI* as used in the grammar of Dalgleish (1865)

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Charles Mason (1820-1900) was a teacher in London. In 1858 he wrote his English Grammar, reprinted up to 1901. In the 1870 revision Mason adds hierarchical brackets and letter codes for multiple subordination, inspired by Bain, who took it from Findlater. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.5

Analysis of multiple subordination from Charles Mason (1870) using hierarchical brackets and letter-codes. The idea of the letter codes is from Bain (who had it from Findlater), but Mason adds a distinction between complement clauses (no dash), relative clause (single dash) and adverbial clause (double dash). Also: for each clause the complete pathway of subordination is repeated in these codes.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Andrew Findlater (1810–1885) from Aberdeen in 1857 revised the chapter *English Grammar* in *Chambers’s Information for the People*. He included notation "after the manner of algebraists", clearly influenced by the German *Periodenbilder* of the time. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.4

Notation "after the manner of algebraists" as introduced by Andrew Findlater in 1857. This is clearly inspired by the German tradition of *Periodenbilder*, but it remains unclear which author has influenced Findlater.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

John Daniel Morell (1816-1891) was an inspector of schools and introduced the grammatical analysis of Ferdinand Becker to Great Britain in 1852. Morell probably saw this approach while studying philosophy, including a year under Fichte in Bonn in 1841. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.3.3

Analysis by Morell (1852) of a complex sentence by separating all clauses and indicating the hierarchical structure by referencing the indices. This method is directly inspired by Abraham Heussler and indirectly by Ferdinand Becker.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Albert Picket (1771-1850) was a teacher and ran his own school in Manhattan and later in Cincinnati. In 1815 he wrote *The juvenile instructor* which includes grammar. To indicate government and agreement he proposes to use lines between the words. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.4.2

Analysis of the opening lines of the second act of the play Douglas (1756) by John Home as found in *The juvenile instructor* by Albert Picket. The numbers refer to syntactical rules and the lines indicate government (arches) and agreement/conjunction (straight lines)

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

A real grammatical tree this time! Found in the *Common School Grammar* from 1862 by David Tower (1808-1868) as available at id.lib.harvard.edu/curiosity/re...

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Abraham Heußler (1803-1855) from Basel in 1840 wrote *Kurzer Abriss der deutschen Sprachlehre*. In a revision he adds a *Satz-analyse* showing the embedding hierarchy with indentation. The use of letters is taken over by John Morell in Great Britain. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec4.3.9

Analysis of a complex sentence with multiple embedded clauses from Heußler (1870), though the first version has to be from the 1840s (because it is cited by John Morell in 1852).

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Hugh Doherty (???-1891) was a revolutionary Fourierist. In 1841, in the midst of his activism, he managed to also write an English grammar. He uses an analysis "in the form of a tree": the primary parts are a "trunk" and the auxiliary parts are "branches" cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.6.1

Analysis "in the form of a tree" from Doherty (1841: 134)

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Li Jinxi (黎锦熙, 1890-1978) wrote *New grammar of the national language* (新著国语文法) in 1924. He used US-style diagramming (圖解法 *tújiě fǎ*) for the analysis of Chinese sentences. The book has seen many revisions and reprints up to the 21st century. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec6.14.1

*tújiě fǎ* (圖解法) from Li Jinxi (1924). In this grammar of Chinese he uses US-style diagramming for the analysis of Chinese. This example is from a large fold-out sheet:

阿菊的⽗親是給⼈家做零僱的僕役的。
Aju's father worked as a servant for others on a small scale.

⼈家有喜事, 喪‍事, 僱他去: 上賓客們的菜, 伺候賓客們的茶‍⽔煙‍⽕；
he was hired to serve food and tea and tobacco to guests at weddings and funerals;

此外還當碼頭上起貨落貨的脚夫。
in addition, he also worked as a porter at the docks, loading and unloading.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Norman Foerster (1887–1972) and John Steadman (1889-1945) wrote *Sentences and Thinking* in 1919. They use a tree to illustrate the structure of sentences with multiple subordinate clauses. Unfortunately, it only approximates the grammatical structure. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.7.3

Tree diagram from Foerster & Steadman (1919) for the sentence:

Standing there looking at a pebble, quite motionless, and apparently doomed, the child filled us with such horror that some of us turned pale as death; but suddenly we saw a man in a dark doorway, whom we hadn’t noticed before (though he had doubtless been there right along) and who, coming out like a flash, blocked the way – it was Martin!

Unfortunately, their graphical representation is only a rough approximation of the grammatical structure of the sentence.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

The good people at the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (UPenn) have digitised two rare works by James Brown (the grammarian, not the musician): The *Syntascope* and the accompanying large plates from 1839. Read more about Brown here: cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#sec5.4.2

Hierarchical structure by interlocking blocks from Brown's *Syntascope* (1839)

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

August Grotefend (1798-1836), teacher in Göttingen and nephew of cuneiform-decipherer G.F.Grotefend, was a big fan of Simon Herling and his analysis of the *Period*. In a commentary directed to Latin teachers he gave an example of a *Zergliederung* of a complex Latin sentence from Livius.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Léon Vaïsse (1807-1881) was the 13th director of the Deaf Institute in Paris and the 10th president of the Société de Linguistique de Paris. In the 1830 he visited the US where he met Frederick Barnard. They developed highly complex grammatical symbolic systems. Vaïsse published his version in 1839.

Highly detailed grammatical annotation for French from Vaïsse (1839).

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Auguste Bébian (1789-1839), godchild of Sicard, was pushed out of the Deaf Institute in Paris in 1821 after an altercation about class sizes with an administrator [sic!]. He used his godfather's method of sentence analysis. In 1827 he took it one step further, adding simple hierarchical structures.

Basic hierarchical sentence analysis from Bébian (1827: 116). The object of the main clause is indicated by the "3", which itself has its own syntactic structure below the line as indicated by the numbers 1 and 2. The numbers are unfortunately not consistently used in this examples (i.e. some words are unmarked, though Bébian's system clearly provides for numbers)

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Roch-Ambroise Sicard (1742-1822) was a highly influential teacher for the Deaf in Paris. He uses digits above the words for syntactic functions, with a separate analysis for subordinate clauses. In this figure he explains how a relative clause is derived from a regular main clause structure.

Derivation of a relative clause from a regular main clause structures from Sicard (1799: 206) in his *Cours d'instruction d'un sourd-muet*

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Solomon Barrett (1800-1882), teacher in Madrid (NY), wrote *The principles of language* in 1837. In 1842 he adds the infamous plate with grammatical trees, influenced by James Brown. In 1857 he adds two frontispieces with possibly the most exquisite grammatical trees in the history of linguistics.

Frontispiece from Barrett (1857), depicting the structural analysis of the first part of verse Hebrew 1:1 from the King James translation of the Bible:

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

William Hall (no dates known) in 1849 wrote *Encyclopedia of English grammar*, which includes a simplistic kind of constituency, called *monology*, following James Brown (the grammarian, not the musician). There is no link to the *monème* (Frei 1941) from the French structuralist tradition.

Simple constituency marking by William Hall (1849) in his *Encyclopedia of English grammar*. He calls this analysis *monology* following the work of Jame Brown (the grammarian).

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Oliver Peirce (1808-1865), teacher in Rome, NY, added syntactic "chains" to his grammar in 1839. In yet another revision in 1843 he adds sentence diagrams. This is the first usage of the term *diagram* for graphical syntax! His diagrams are as much poetic interpretation as syntactic analysis.

"chain" of a sentence from Peirce (1839: 50). Note that "for gentleman in Utica" is a single constituent, so it is not really accurate to depict this as a single linear chain.

Diagram from Peirce (1843: 304) for an excerpt from he poem *Life is a sea* from John Mason Good:

But rocks below, and tempests sleep,
Insidious o'er the glassy deep,
Nor leave an hour secure.

The diagram is strictly speaking not a real syntactic analysis but more an interpretation of the poetic intention.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

James Brown (±1790-1855, not the musician) was a productive but crazy grammarian from Philadelphia. Starting in 1826 he used sensible concepts like "sectioning" (~constituency) and "scanning" (~dependency), alas buried in absurd terminology and dismissive rants. This syntax tree is from 1840.

Analysis of *very high trees fell* from Brown (1840). The letters represent the words: a=trees, b=fell, c=high, d=very, showing their hierarchical dependency through the branching. The reason for the inclusion of the number 5 is unclear.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Fritz Rahn (1891–1964) and Wolfgang Pfleiderer (1877-1971) in the 1950s wrote *Deutsche Spracherziehung*. It has a very simple graphical method, squares for main clauses and circles for subordinate clauses. It does not help to grasp the complexity of long sentences. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

*Satzbild* by Rahn & Pfleiderer (1953) for a long and complex German sentence. The analysis is way to simple to uncover the complex structure of the example:

Er wußte wohl, daß er von diesem Leben nicht mehr viel zu erwarten hatte, und war entschlossen, es wegzuwerfen, wenn er damit den Menschen dienen konnte; aber wer die bewundernswerte Sorgfalt seiner Arbeit sah, konnte nicht auf den Gedanken kommen, dieser Mann habe mit dem Leben abgeschlossen, und wenn er durch die Gassen des Städtchens schritt, bot er mit seinem gebräunten Antlitz, seinen fröhlich lachenden Augen und seinem aufrechten Gang eher das Bild eines Jünglings, der an der Schwelle des Lebens steht, als das eines Mannes, gegen den der Tod schon die Hand ausreckt.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Maxime Lanusse (1853-1930) and Henri Yvon (1873-1963) in 1921 write *Cours complet de grammaire française*. The examples still reflect the war. AFAIK this is the first graphical display of an *analyse logique* in the French grammatical tradition. (spot the error!) cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

analyse logique from Lanusse & Yvon (1923: 227) for the following sentence (which is a nice sign of the times):

Puisque nos soldats, pendant qu’ils soutenaient contre les Allemands des luttes si cruelles, ont montré que les Français sont doués des plus belles qualités militaires, il est légitime que nous ayons confiance dans l’avenir de notre pays; mais il est nécessaire que nous pratiquions dans la paix les vertus de discipline dont les combattants nous ont donné l’exemple.

The arrow in the top middle is wrong: it should be reversed, pointing from the main clauses 4+6 to the subordinate clause 1. All other arrows point towards the subordinate clause.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Georges Galichet (1904-1992) wrote many French textbooks, starting with *Essai de grammaire psychologique* (1947). He uses idiosyncratic graphical syntactic analyses throughout his work, starting in 1947 with an *arête de poisson* ‘fishbone diagram’. Read more: cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Arête de poisson ‘fishbone diagram’ from Georges Galichet (1947: 164) for an examples from La Fontaine:

Un mourant qui comptait plus de cent ans de vie,
se plaignait à la Mort, que précipitamment
elle le contraignait de partir tout à l’heure.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Radivoj Francis Mikuš (1906-1983) from Ljubjana wrote various innovative syntactic papers in the 1950s, including a full example of rewrite rules in 1952, without knowledge of Harris (1946) and before the first such proposals by Chomsky. Read more about Mikuš here: cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Syntactic analysis by Mikuš (1952), including a full set of rewrite rules (bottom), distinguishing head (T) from dependent (T'). Endpoints of the recursion are printed in italics. The resulting structure is given here using hierarchical brackets, but Mikuš uses various other graphical representations of this structure

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Henri Bonnard (1915-2004) in 1950 wrote a textbook *grammaire française* which includes graphical analyses inspired by Damourette & Pichon. Bonnard used colours in the classroom on the blackboard. In 1959 Grevisse took over Bonnard's system of graphical syntax. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

graphical analysis by Bonnard (1950) of a sentence from a fable of Fontaine:

A l’heure dite, il courut au logis
De la Cigogne son hôtesse;
Loua très fort sa politesse;
Trouva le dîner cuit à point.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

In their massive 4500-page *Essai de grammaire de la langue française* Jacques Damourette (1873-1943) and Édouard Pichon (1890-1940) include a single graphical analysis (Volume 3 from 1930, p. 185), which appears to have inspired Bonnard and indirectly Grevisse. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

graphical analysis from Damourette & Pichon (1933: 185) for a sentence from Voltaire *L'Orphelin de la Chine*. Inexplicably, the graphic replaces the verbform "offre" with "est offrant" and wrongfully places the copula "est" in the subject-box.

Autour de notre enceinte, une garde terrible
Aux peuples consternés offre de toutes part
Un rempart hérissé de piques et de dards.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Dora Schulz (1906-1974) and Heinz Griesbach (1918-2008) taught German at the *Goethe Institut* since the early 1950s. They wrote a *Grammatik der deutschen Sprache* in 1960. It contains the first full-fledged illustration of a *Feldermodell* for the German sentence. cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Satzbild from the *Grammatik der deutschen Sprache* by Griesbach & Schulze (1960). Illustrated here is a syntactic analysis of the sentence "Wenn du mir versprichst, daß du mir das Geld wiedergibst, sobald dir dein Vater den Scheck geschickt hat, kann ich dir die 100 Mark geben, obwohl ich noch mindestens zwei Wochen warten muß, bis ich mein nächstes Gehalt bekomme."

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Johannes Kinker (1764-1845) in 1817 published his thoughts on language at the royal dutch academy. He included a pasigraphic (his term) sentence analysis of Cicero, but different from Maimieux's pasigraphy, Kinker's approach is a real syntactic analysis #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Syntactic analysis of Cicero by Kinker (1817).

The sentence analysed here is "Quare, quoniam id, quod est primum atque hujus Imperii disciplinaeque maiorum proprium est, facere nondum audeo, faciam id, quod est ad severitatem lenius, ad communem salutem utilius. Nam si te interfici jussero, residebit in republica reliqua conjuratorum manus: sin tu (quod te jam dudum hortor) exieris; exhaurietur ex urbe tuorum comitum magna et perniciosa sentina reipublicae."

The analysis has four levels of embedding, starting with hebrew letters, then latin capitals, then latin lowercase letters and finally greek lowercase letters. For details of Kinker's analysis, follow the link in the post.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Maurice Grevisse (1895-1980), a Belgian teacher, wrote *Précis de grammaire française* in 1939. Inspired by Henri Bonnard, he added syntactic schemas to the 25th edition of 1959. This version of the book is still in print today as *Le petit Grevisse*. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Schéma from Maurice Grevisse (1966: 284) for the sentence *Cet homme, digne qu’on le confonde, vit d’intrigues.*
‘This man, worthy of being exposed, lives by intrigue.’

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Felipe Senillosa (1790-1858) in 1817 wrote *Gramática española* in Buenos Aires. About a third of this book consists of graphical syntactic analyses. Most are constituent-like analyses, but a final tour-de-force is an interlocking dependency tree. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Dependency-like structure from Senillosa (1817), to be read from bottom left to top right. The sentence consists of five clauses, which are all reformulated as relative clauses, crossing at the head noun they refer to. The original sentence analysed here is "La ciencia y la virtud son los dos bienes que los vayvenes de la fortuna injusta no disipáron nunca."

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), professor in Leipzig and co-founder of modern psychology, used graphical syntactic analyses based on binary subdivisions of a *Gesammtvorstellung*. This influenced Bloomfield (who ignored the graphics) and (indirectly) Chomsky #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Graphical analysis by Wilhelm Wundt of a sentence from Goethe's *Werder*: Als er sich den Vorwurf sehr zu Herzen zu nehmen schien (a⏜b), und immer aufs neue beteuerte (c), daß er gewiß gern mitteile (d), gern für Freunde tätig sei (e), so empfand sie (A⏜B), daß sie sein zartes Gemüt verletzt habe (a1⏜b1), und sie fühlte sich als seine Schuldnerin (A⏜D).

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Lev Ivanovich Polivanov (1838-1899), student of Buslaev and founder of the Polivanovskaya Gymnasium in Moscow, wrote many versions of a *Учебникъ русской грамматики*. In 1873 he adds a graphical analysis of complex sentences using vertical lines. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Graphical analysis of a complex sentence by Polivanov (1873). This graphic represents a sentence from a letter from N.M. Karamzin:

[А] Улицы прямы, широки и хорошо вымощены, а [Б] вь срединѣ проведены глубокіе каналы, [а] вь которыхь сь шумомь течеть вода, [а'] уносящая сь собою всю нечистоту иаь города, и [б'] сверхь того весьма полезная ву случаѣ ножара.

[А] The streets are straight, wide and well paved, and [Б] in the middle there are deep canals, [а] into which water flows noisily, [а'] carrying away with it all the sewage from the city, and [б'] moreover being very useful in case of a fire.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Jan Gebauer (1838-1907), a major figure in Czech linguistics, started out as a school teacher. He wrote a *Mluvnice česká* (1890) which includes various different graphical approaches to syntax, including hierarchical braces and line diagrams. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Hierarchical analysis of the internal structure of the sentence "The Earth rotates around its axis every twenty-four hours" by Gebauer (1890)

Graphical display of the internal structure of a complex sentence from Gebauer (1890). The example sentence is from Daniel Adam z Veleslavína and translates approximately as "Just as we have greater love for our true parents, who begot us, than for others, who chose and adopted us as their own sons: so too the country, in which we were born and raised, is dearer to us than another, to which fortune has turned us."

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Theodor Paul (not Hermann!) was a teacher's teacher. In 1910 he wrote a German grammar in which he used verb-centric graphical sentence analyses. His graphics are rather clumsily because the lines only go horizontal and/or vertical (see the alt-text). #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Graphical sentence analysis from Paul (1910) for the sentence:

Am Ufer des Ganges verschlang heute ein riesiger Alligator wutschnaubend einen braunen Inder.

Again: somebody should write a book about the strange examples used by linguists!

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Christian Müllener was a Swiss teacher (any tipps about his biography are welcome) wrote *Praktische Übungsschule* (1885) in which he provided exercises to construct sentences based on simple clauses and aa symbolic structure of the complex sentence. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Exercise from Müllener (1885) to construct a complex sentence based on the simple clauses to the left and the symbolic representation to the right. The intended results is: Um seine Brust zu stärken, ging er täglich die steilsten Berge hinan; oder er trat an das Ufer des Meeres, wo die Wogen ein großes Gebrause machten, und suchte mit seiner Stimme das Getöse zu übertönen.

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Martin Hattala (1821-1903), teacher and later professor in Prague, used a simplified *Periodenbild* in his 1857 *Srovnávací mluvnice* for a complex sentence from Ján Kollár. AFAIK, this is the earliest example of graphical grammar in Czech grammars. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

strongly simplified *Periodenbild* as used by Martin Hattala (1857) for the sentence: Lépe činí ten, kdo těží s mále‑m, stoje věrně na své postati, velký‑t' je, bud' sluhou nebo králem. ('He does better, who makes do with little, standing true to his position, even if he is great, whether he is a servant or a king.')

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Karel Kunz was a 19thC teacher in Opava, Czech Republic. I cannot find anything on his biography, suggestions welcome! In 1859 he wrote *Náuka o větách* (lessons about sentences), in which he uses a 'depiction in letters' to analyse complex sentences. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

"representation in letters" from Kunz (1859) for the Czech Poem "Lépe činí ten, kdo těží s málem, stoje věrně na své postati velkýt' je, bud' sluhou nebo králem."

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Friedrich Julius Horn (1809-1841) was a teacher in Rastenburg (today Kętrzyn in Poland). In his *Grammatik der neuhochdeutschen Sprache auf historischer und logischer Grundlage* (1837) he used *Periodenbilder* to analyse sentences with multiple subordination, following Lehmann (1833). #linguistics

*Periodenbild* from Horn (1837: 313) for the sentence: [A] Wißt ihr denn, [a] ob der kleine Knabe, [α] der neben euch Blumen zerreißt [β] und mit den Blättern spielt, [a] nicht einst als Kriegsgott in einem stürmischen Welttheile aussteigen [b] und mit den Stürmen spielen werde?

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Johann Willibald Nagl (1856-1912) worked on dialects in Graz and Vienna, but also published *Deutsche Sprachlehre für Mittelschulen* in 1906. He uses a verb-centric approach for his syntactic analysis, which also can include subordinate clauses. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Václav Zikmund (1816-1873) was a Czech teacher in Prague. His *Skladba jazyka českého* (1863) contains various graphical syntactic analyses, among them a very early dependency tree (left) and an illustration of different possible constituency structures (right). cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Very early dependency tree from Zikmund (1863) for Czech

Graphical illustration of different interpretations of a complex noun phrase using a kind of constituency analysis from Zikmund (1863)

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Alexander Matveyevich Peshkovsky (1878-1933) was a prolific author of grammatical textbooks and together with D.N. Ushakov reinvigorated language teaching in Russia after the revolution. He experimented with various graphical syntactic displays. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Graphical display of sentence structures from Peshkovsky's third edition of *Русскій синтаксисъ въ научномъ освѣщеніи* (‘Russian syntax in scientific education’) from 1928. The actual sentences displayed here can be found here: https://cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/#ex5.25

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Sergey Efimovich Kryuchkov (1897-1969) and Mikhail Vasilyevich Svetlaev (1898-1959) wrote *Грамматика учебник*, which Tesnière (1959:15) cites as an inspiration. By this point in time the Russian revolution has arrived in grammars (check the alt-text)! #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

Schema of Kryuchkov & Svetlaev (1936, probably originally published in 1925), also cited by Tesnière (1959: 15 fn.1) as an influence on his stemmata. The sentence analysed here is *Классовый враг бешено сопротивляется социалистическому наступлению* which means *The class enemy is furiously resisting the socialist offensive*. By this point in time the Russian revolution has arrived in grammatical textbooks!

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Michael Cysouw @cysouw.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Pyotr Vladimirovich Smirnovsky (1846—1904) was a teacher in St. Petersburg and wrote the *Учебник русской грамматики* in 1884. It includes a few very early examples of dependency trees. It remains unclear how Smirnovksy came up with this idea. #linguistics cysouw.github.io/graphicalgra...

*Графическимь способомь* 'graphical method' from Smirnovsky (1884)

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