That’s because (as he noted in this reply) he forgot about the conditional 
If you draw sentence diagrams of the two you ought to find that they end up looking different because of the different syntax structure, I think.
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I’ll do this when I have a moment in the diagramming thread.
I think you are referring to these two sentences?
その色を黒 と する
and
ニューヨークへ行く と 良いレストランがある
?
If so, then yes, I expect the sentence (syntax) diagrams to differ because one comes after a 名詞 and the other after a 動詞 .
It interests me, by the way, that I tend to try to combine nuances of meaning into as few “buckets” as possible, while linguists like yourself seem to be uncomfortable without exhaustive, fine-grained enumeration and separation of every potential semantic nuance.
I mostly just apply loose “rules” when speaking or reading, based on obvious syntactical usage (particle between nouns vs. after verbs, etc.).
I’m more interested in Japanese conversation than anything. Reading and grammar studies to me are mostly in pursuit of more natural conversation. There’s no time when conversing to apply complex rules or reason about long lists of possibilities.
Yet another example of “lies we tell children” I suspect (academic thoroughness vs. “shortcut thinking” for pedagogy or time constraints).
(Aaaaand I’ve just wasted several minutes, even without diagramming, when I should be doing something else…)
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More that one has Nと as one of the things modifying the verb, in the same way that を is doing, whereas the other is more like Sentence1とSentence2. It’s not exactly sentence+sentence, but it’s sorta similar, I think (eg you can’t pull an Xを from S2 forwards so it’s in front of the と, or it would become part of S1.)
I’m not a linguist, by the way, I just have an amateur interest in it. As I think I said up-thread, it’s more that when I’m trying to explain something I tend to think that pointing out the differences is helpful – that because the sentence is structured this way you know the nuance of meaning is this and not that. Also I think learner confusion is more often because they haven’t sorted out the difference between two similar things than because they haven’t noticed connections and commonalities between two apparently different things. Spotting connections is easier to do for yourself – our brains are good at it.
Eventually, as you say, when actually using the language the aim is not to be thinking about grammar rules at all. The metaphor I always like to use is scaffolding. When you’re building a house, the end goal is the house, not the scaffolding; and you don’t absolutely have to use scaffolding; but putting up scaffolding helps you get the job done more quickly and easily. Eventually the house is built and the scaffolding goes away, but that doesn’t mean it was useless. Similarly, the point is to learn the language, not to learn a bunch of grammar rules; but I think for most people thinking a bit about grammar rules along the way helps in getting to the point where eventually they don’t need them at all.
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Also these sentences: 皆いっしょうけんめい生きてる。
They all are living their lives the best way they can.
My understanding: They are all wise living.
いっしょうけんめい doesn’t mean “wise”. (And in case you were mis-parsing the sentence, it’s a single word, 一生懸命.) It’s more like doing something as hard as you can, giving it your undivided attention, wholeheartedly, (in some situations) as if your life depended on it.
In this kind of slightly philosophical sense it’s being used in this sentence, I think “living their lives the best way they can” isn’t a terrible translation. The idea is that everybody’s trying their best to get through the day, they’re not in the situations they’re in because they’re not trying, they’re not just drifting aimlessly through life. Best translation likely depends heavily on the context.
As another use of いっしょうけんめい with 生きる, it’s in the title of a book 今日をいっしょうけんめいで生きる which is “homespun wisdom from a granny” kind of stuff about how to live happily in old age (being optimistic, focusing on simple day-to-day pleasures, challenging yourself to do new things). “Sieze the day”, if you like.
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