can you analyze this paragraph
pause and try now if you want to
here's my completed tree
last chance to avoid spoilers because
i'm going to unblur it now
keep watching if you want to understand
how to get from the paragraph to the
analysis tree
i'm a philosopher
i'm doing this because reading and
analyzing text are really important
skills
for figuring out which ideas are good
having debates
explaining ideas clearly understanding
what people are saying
they're relevant for all sorts of
critical thinking
and philosophizing
i wanted to use a real example so i went
to a popular blog
for context here's the post
i picked this paragraph because it is a
long list in it connected with this word
and
so i thought that would make a good tree
the paragraph says
this is a nice goodbye to a beloved
product it's been under remarked upon
how good the apple newsroom site has
been back in the jobs era
apple would post things to the hot news
page of apple.com and when it was no
longer hot or news it would just
disappear
newsroom posts feel permanent
apple's post today contains a nice
gallery of the best and most beloved
ipod models
the 2001 original the 2004 mini the 2006
nano which really propelled the lineup
into what we then thought was the
stratosphere of popularity
the 2007 touch
the 2012 7th generation nano and the
shuffle
now i'll go through how i analyzed the
paragraph and made grammar trees for the
sentences
if you want to see me actually make the
trees i live streamed it the link is in
the description
in this video i'll just show you the
trees and explain them
first sentence is pretty simple
there are no conjunctions so we start
with the verb is
the subject is this and the complement
is goodbye then we have basic modifiers
a and nice and we have a prepositional
phrase
so two is a preposition and its object
is product and then product has its own
modifiers a and beloved
so the main idea is this is goodbye and
then there are three modifiers and then
within one of the modifiers
there are additional modifiers
second sentence
has one conjunction and two finite verbs
main idea here it has been under
remarked upon
then we have this how clause
giving us additional information
it tells us what has been under remarked
upon which is how good something has
been
so the verb in this subclause is the has
along with the ben
non-finite verb
so the basic idea here is site has been
good site is the subject and
good is a complement
we also have the apple and newsroom as
modifiers for site
third sentence is more complex
we've got three finite verbs
and three conjunctions
this wood is mislabeled it should be a
verb not a modifier
main idea here is apple would post
things
and we've got this and
which links two clauses to the main idea
one is telling us
it would disappear
the other one
is telling us
when
it was
and then we've got an or group under
that
so or
hot or news when it was hot or news it
would disappear
and then there's a no longer modifier on
that
and the entire thing has this other
modifier back
an adverb
which is modified itself by the
preposition in
and then we have the noun for it era and
era's modifiers
there are also some prepositions down at
the bottom left
so two page and of apple.com
along with a few basic modifiers
fourth sentence is really easy it's only
four words
so feel is the linking verb
it links posts to permanent
and newsroom tells us about what type of
posts
fifth sentence is far more complicated
however although it's big if you ignore
this part
the which clause in the parentheses
it's actually not that hard
so the main structure is we have this
contains verb up here
so we have post
contains gallery
and then we have the preposition of
and we're finding out what models and
then there's a colon and a list of
models
so we've got the 2001 original the 2004
mini the nano the touch the other nano
and the shuffle so it's going through a
big list so there's a lot of stuff and
you get all these modifiers like the and
a year repeatedly
but it's not actually very complicated
or hard
it's just on the longer side
however the parenthetical clause is
actually hard
so other features we have this and here
there are two ends one of them is
grouping together all the different
types of ipod
and the left hand
is grouping together best with beloved
for a double modifier on models
it's the best and most beloved ipod
models
ipod by the way there is a modifier
telling us the type of models
rather than a noun as you might expect
so ignoring the bottom part
is kind of big but not that hard
now let's zoom in on the tricky part
which refers to the 2006 nano that's the
one we're talking about here so the 2006
nano propelled the lineup into
what was thought to be the stratosphere
of popularity
so there's a couple of weird features
here we've got the which
twice
and i've got the what
three times
that's because the witch is doing two
jobs in the sentence and the what is
doing three jobs
it is possible to do it with only one
node per word
but i prefer to add a node for each job
the word does
this mostly comes up with relative
pronouns
and relative adverbs
so the job of which
is two parts one it is a conjunction
that connects the propelled clause to
the rest of the sentence and also
it refers to the 2006 nano and serves as
the subject of propelled so
it's 2006 nano propelled lineup
with the subject verb and object
the what with in the prepositional into
phrase is trickier
so i looked at additional example
sentences as well as the dictionary to
try to figure it out
this is a much simpler sentence
with a what used in the same way
what we need is a commitment
is very similar to the
original version
what we then thought was the
stratosphere of popularity
so here are the what plays two roles
it is a conjunction
that allows there to be two clauses in
the sentence
and
it's also serving as the subjective is
but i have those as one node because
they're in the same place and it is also
serving as the object of need
so when you say what we need it means we
need what
the what is out of order but it actually
goes in regular order after the need we
need what we need something
and the what is linked through the
linking verb is to commitment so the
what refers to commitment so that we
need commitment
so if you understand the concept we need
commitment then you can see that what is
the object of need it's the thing needed
okay then i moved on to
a sentence that is a bit harder and more
similar the thing that we need is a
commitment
so we have here we have
thing is commitment
and there's like a that an extra
tricky word in here
and then we have we need thing
which refers back to commitment
so it's considering if it had a that in
it
if you treat what as the thing that
then how do you do it
that's basically what the what means is
the thing that so i did a version with
the thing that replacing the what
so if you look here
and compare the trees
they're actually the same tree with just
one thing changed
where it used to say
what we've crossed it out and replaced
it with these three nodes
here then final version they transformed
the lineup into what we thought was a
travesty
this is the most similar the original
sentence
and i've got the what in three places
which matches what i did
in the actual sentence we're analyzing
so this what down here is the subject of
need and it refers to travesty
into has what as the prepositional
object as well
and what is the subject of was so the
what has to be linked through was to
travesty
and it has to be the objective into
and it has to be the object of need so
it has three different jobs
so going back here we can see
it's repelled into what so what is the
objective into and it is what was
stratosphere
so what is linked to stratosphere and we
have we thought what
so what here
also refers to stratosphere
and is linked to we via thought
so the what has multiple roles
i've represented it as three but you
could even do four
because
this one here
actually has a double role it is both
the subject of the was
and it is the conjunction
joining
the thought clause
but those two roles are at least in the
same place but the other ones had to go
in different places in the tree
all right now that we have a handle on
the parenthetical
we can zoom back out and see the whole
tree
we have the relatively simple part
and then we have the hard part that we
analyze separately
dealing with sub trees on their own can
make things a lot easier if you try to
look at the entire sentence at once it
can be very overwhelming
but you can break it down into just one
part at a time
and in particular i took the
prepositional phrase down here with the
what in it and looked at that just by
itself
then after you understand a subpart
better you want to look at the whole
thing again and understand how it fits
in
so the meaning here is he's
giving us extra details about the 2006
nano
the nano propelled the lineup's
popularity
how high did it propel it we thought at
the time that that was the stratosphere
however
apple is actually considerably more
popular now than in 2006 it has gotten a
lot more popular so that was apparently
not the stratosphere there was a lot of
room for growth
but at the time it seemed like
we were kind of hitting as popular as
things could get
because we didn't imagine anything like
the 2022 iphone which is doing far
better has much higher sales than any of
the ipods ever had
so now we've looked at the grammar of
the sentences
looking at sentence grammar can be
skipped if it is easy enough and you
have enough experience with trees that
you intuitively understand it but if
you're new to this kind of analysis or
you find a sentence hard then you can do
the sentence grammar analysis
then the next step after that
is the paragraph analysis what does the
paragraph as a whole mean
the main thing here for making trees
is to have relationship nodes which i've
put in aqua
so there are actually two different
trees here on the left side we have a
simplified version that uses
abbreviations and on the right side we
have one with the full sentences other
than that they're the same tree
so i abbreviated the first sentence to
the word goodbye the second sentence is
just under remark
the fourth one is permanent third one is
disappear and last one is gallery
so in the very abbreviated version which
helps you understand the structure and
see how things fit together better
we have goodbye
then there's extra detail under remark
then comparison disappear and permanent
and then also we have a result which is
the gallery
paragraph trees are more difficult than
grammar trees because coming up with the
relationships between the sentences
is more free form it's more creative
than understanding grammar grammar
follows clearer stricter rules
whereas how
sentences
interact and relate to each other is a
bit more free form
and take some thought to understand
what's going on
so it's a bit easier to understand with
the full versions we have the sentence
about a goodbye
i took that as the main idea or
conclusion
of the paragraph so i made it the root
note
then we had this sentence about
something being under remarked so i
thought that was a detail it's giving us
extra information extra detail
kind of like a modifier
and then he gave us additional detail
about that
in the form of a comparison he compared
what happened in the past with what
happens now in the past stuff
disappeared and now it feels permanent
this comparison shows that the site has
been good it is making the point in this
previous sentence
and then elaborating further on the
newsroom posts feel permanent he told us
about the result which is that all these
different ipods ended up in a gallery
they have old stuff it hasn't just
disappeared so they can reuse it
now that we have trees for the
individual sentences as well as the full
paragraph we can zoom out and see the
entire thing together
it's worth noting that paragraph trees
do not have to be one sentence per node
if the sentences are more complicated
and especially if there are multiple
ideas in a single sentence
then you may want to separate those
ideas into separate notes
so the notes can range in size from one
clause up to one sentence or a paragraph
tree
zooming out we have the entire thing put
together this uses the five individual
sentence trees and it uses the paragraph
relationship nodes
detail comparison and result to combine
all of them into the overall tree
so you can see the full structure of the
paragraph
this is the same as the paragraph tree
except where a node had a sentence it
has been replaced with the entire tree
for that sentence
it's nice to see how trees can fit
together
so let's zoom in on this
at the top we've got our original
sentence
and then it is connected with detail
when you go down
we've got
more information
specifically here
is the detail
and then
under this sentence we have the
comparison
comparison has on the left
and the right the two things being
compared
and the right one has the result
which is this whole big sentence that we
spent a lot of time on telling us about
all the different ipods
then we can zoom out and see the entire
thing
all of the different trees i made when
analyzing this paragraph
you may have some questions like is this
analysis worth the effort is it useful
enough to put in all this time
the answer is if it is easy for you if
you've done this kind of thing enough
times and practiced it that it has
become intuitive to you then you can
sometimes get away with skipping steps
because you have the skill to back that
up however if you haven't already done
this a bunch of times then it is well
worth your time to practice it it will
help you understand what you're doing
more clearly and then you can use those
skills in the future
even when you spend less time on
something
so if you imagine that every time you
read something it would take this much
work
that would be bad and would not work
well
and if you see the alternatives as
either doing this much conscious work
every time or glossing over the details
and not doing very much analysis
then there's no way to win because you
need detail to be a good philosopher a
good thinker
but you don't have the time and energy
to go into this level of detail on every
single thing
and the solution is automatization you
have to practice these skills
which does take time but only a limited
number of times once you get good at it
then you'll only do it occasionally or
on particularly hard cases
with enough practice you can master
these skills
so when you read paragraphs you
understand this level of detail without
having to think of it you want to train
your subconscious to be able to do this
much analysis
with a low error rate
the more you practice things in a
conscious explicit way and do a really
good job with those
the more you can learn
to do things better with low attention
and low effort when your subconscious is
in charge and doing the work
people who try to become good at
philosophy or have intellectual debates
or do critical thinking
often get stuck
and the reason they're getting stuck
there are many reasons but one of the
main ones is that their subconscious is
not good enough at reading and listening
and understanding a bunch of words their
subconscious cannot automatically make
all these trees and get them right
and they're not able to make up for that
with much of conscious effort either
the solution is practice these skills
and get better at them
so that's why i'm teaching them
you can find my philosophy articles
which generally cover more advanced
issues at criticalism.com
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