Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Gavin Degraw’s Grammar

LL’s post on clause embedding made me want to try to untangle the embedded clauses in one of the most syntactically sophisticated pop tunes of late, Gavin Degraw’s “I Don’t Wanna Be”:

“I don’t want to be anything other than what I’ve been trying to be lately.”

How’d I do?

I don’t want - negated declarative
[to be - infinitive as a direct object,
[[anything - pronoun complementing the copulative in the infinitive clause
[[[other than - compound subordinating conjunction
[[[what I’ve been trying - relative with imperfect participle
[[[[to be lately - infinitive clause with adverb

Next up:

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale
-Procol Harum

Posted by Nathan Bierma on 11/09 at 12:24 PM
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