# Japanese Sentence Tree Diagram Appreciation Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Reading\ **Created:** [August 26, 2021, 7:29am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201 "2021-08-26T07:29:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DIO-Berry](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/dio-berry/32/828567_2.png) [@DIO-Berry](https://community.wanikani.com/u/DIO-Berry)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 7:29am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/1 "2021-08-26T07:29:54Z")
Hello! This is a thread for breaking down Japanese sentences into diagrams. You may or may not be familiar with sentence diagraming. It’s a practice that helps you break down what’s connected in a sentence. > In a tree diagram, a sentence is divided into two parts: a subject and a predicate. They are made up of noun phrases or verb phrases. These are groups of words that include a noun or verb and any words that add as modifiers. The subject is a noun phrase while a predicate is usually a verb phrase. The noun phrase _A big dog_ is comprised of the indefinite article ‘a’, the adjective ‘big’, and the noun ‘dog’. The verb phrase _jumped over the fence_ consists of the verb ‘jumped’ and the prepositional phrase ‘over the fence’. > these components… descend from the subject and predicate in the form of lines acting as branches. This continues until each noun or verb phrase is broken down into its simplest parts. In the end, a sentence diagrammed in this style should look like a vast tree, with the subject and predicate acting as the trunk and the sentence modifiers standing in as the colorful and complex leaves that give it personality. Here are some English examples that increase in complexity: ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/original/4X/e/2/c/e2cb51d0afefb2f16b4e4303a0e17ba33395739a.png) ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/original/4X/3/8/7/387d48e4fcf1696d4801ff3078994925a477c483.png) ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/original/4X/c/1/b/c1b2285a92c8909aa368467b925bb9d35e7ca561.png) Source of quoted content and first two photos: [https://blog.ung.edu/press/a-linguists-tree-of-knowledge/](https://blog.ung.edu/press/a-linguists-tree-of-knowledge/) We used to do this in one of my Japanese Linguistics classes and I found it quite helpful. Maybe it’ll be helpful to you as well. Feel free to suggest sentences or draw trees of your own. Here’s an example of a Japanese one from my class. It’s in romaji. You may have trouble with computer tree generators being able to understand kanji and kana. 可愛(かわい)い子供(こども)の帽子(ぼうし) **![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/original/4X/f/3/a/f3ac9ccdb292daefd56759eeca05600e3309c46b.png)** This example is a little funky as the diagram shows it is the hat of **a cute child** that is being talked about and not a cute **child’s hat** Here’s a website where you can generate trees > **[Syntax Tree Generator](http://mshang.ca/syntree/)** > > An app for producing linguistics syntax trees from labelled bracket notation. Be careful to phrase things correctly as it uses brackets. For example, the third tree in this post of “John asked if Mary like him” can be generated with this “[TP [NP John] [T’ [T past] [VP [V’ [V asked] [CP [C if] [TP [NP Mary] [T’ [T pres [VP [V’ [V likes] [NP him]]]]]]]]]]” Post to be edited later for additional instructions on how to make trees. Critique and requests are welcome. ---
**Author:** ![DIO-Berry](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/dio-berry/32/828567_2.png) [@DIO-Berry](https://community.wanikani.com/u/DIO-Berry)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 7:30am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/2 "2021-08-26T07:30:36Z")
@IzCreature My brain’s going a bit foggy so probably stopping here for today. ---
**Author:** ![Belthazar](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/belthazar/32/4469_2.png) [@Belthazar](https://community.wanikani.com/u/Belthazar)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 7:40am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/3 "2021-08-26T07:40:27Z")
> [@DIO-Berry](#): > > This example is a little funky as the diagram shows it is the hat of **a cute child** that is being talked about and not a cute **child’s hat** Well, it’s kinda ambiguous, because it could be either. ---
**Author:** ![Zeiosis](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/zeiosis/32/455398_2.png) [@Zeiosis](https://community.wanikani.com/u/Zeiosis)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 7:43am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/4 "2021-08-26T07:43:56Z")
I’ve always been interested in these tree diagrams! Is there anywhere that offers a fairly simple background on them? I’m afraid I don’t know anything aside from noun, verb, and prepositional phrases atm ☹ what are these things with primes attached to them? A’, N’… ---
**Author:** ![DIO-Berry](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/dio-berry/32/828567_2.png) [@DIO-Berry](https://community.wanikani.com/u/DIO-Berry)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 7:44am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/5 "2021-08-26T07:44:54Z")
The phrase yes, but not the diagram itself. If it were a **child’s hat** the branch would split to the right instead of the left. ---
**Author:** ![DIO-Berry](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/dio-berry/32/828567_2.png) [@DIO-Berry](https://community.wanikani.com/u/DIO-Berry)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 7:45am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/6 "2021-08-26T07:45:47Z")
I will try to find something. I wasn’t having much luck earlier, so I figured this was a good stopping point 😅 ---
**Author:** ![IzCreature](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/izcreature/32/501654_2.png) [@IzCreature](https://community.wanikani.com/u/IzCreature)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 12:48pm UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/7 "2021-08-26T12:48:37Z")
Oh dear, I said tree diagram because that sounded right but what Im familiar with looks like ![Screenshot_20210826-074819_Brave](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/original/4X/d/7/1/d71bb68f9331ffa24d34b10ef82fb0fef3937ca7.jpeg) ![Screenshot_20210826-074804_Brave](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/original/4X/1/4/4/144f11b9e83d34749ff672d285d17b54950163c0.jpeg) ![Screenshot_20210826-074932_Brave](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/original/4X/b/4/2/b4267ee8ea87a0e8a7306fe54a713795c435c5e0.jpeg) ---
**Author:** ![OneUp](https://cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wanikanicommunity/original/3X/f/d/fd4c154120954695f788402f3bcf4e616499bc2d.png) [@OneUp](https://community.wanikani.com/u/OneUp)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 1:19pm UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/8 "2021-08-26T13:19:16Z")
This gives me flashbacks to elementary school English class sentence diagramming. ---
**Author:** ![DIO-Berry](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/dio-berry/32/828567_2.png) [@DIO-Berry](https://community.wanikani.com/u/DIO-Berry)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 2:21pm UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/9 "2021-08-26T14:21:12Z")
that is quite different 👁 ---
**Author:** ![Rrwrex](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/rrwrex/32/520069_2.png) [@Rrwrex](https://community.wanikani.com/u/Rrwrex)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 6:08pm UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/10 "2021-08-26T18:08:39Z")
Oh, man! I used to love diagramming sentences in elementary school (and I remember getting the stink-eye from other kids because I enjoyed it!). Haven’t thought about it in years. I’d never considered doing it with Japanese. Very interesting. Off topic, but your blurring the furigana in your post blew me away. Very cool. I’d never seen that done before. I learned about the [ruby tag](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ruby) on these forums but how did you create spoiler text for the furigana?!! Did you have to use inline CSS? ---
**Author:** ![Belthazar](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/belthazar/32/4469_2.png) [@Belthazar](https://community.wanikani.com/u/Belthazar)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 11:36pm UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/11 "2021-08-26T23:36:32Z")
> [@Rrwrex](#): > > how did you create spoiler text for the furigana?!! Just use spoiler tags inside the ruby tags. ```auto Plaintext[spoiler]spoilertext[/spoiler] ``` ---
**Author:** ![DIO-Berry](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/dio-berry/32/828567_2.png) [@DIO-Berry](https://community.wanikani.com/u/DIO-Berry)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2021, 11:57pm UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/12 "2021-08-26T23:57:09Z")
I go the easy route and use this userscript 🙂 > [@\[Userscript\] Forum: IME2Furigana](https://community.wanikani.com/t/userscript-forum-ime2furigana/39109): > > This is a third-party script and is not created by the WaniKani team. By using this, you understand that it can stop working at any time or be discontinued indefinitely. [General script installation instructions](https://community.wanikani.com/t/visual-guide-on-how-to-install-a-userscript/12136)[IME2Furigana](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/390317-ime2furigana) What does it do? The script targets the reply textbox of the WaniKani forum. It adds two functionalities: Furigana markup Writing \<漢字\>[かんじ] results in 漢字(かんじ), while writing \<漢字\>{かんじ} results in 漢字(). The markup is the same as in the [Easy Furigana userscript](https://community.wanikani.com/t/42442) by @Kum… Despite the first line, I can’t recall any non user generated issues with it ---
**Author:** ![Sinyaven](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/sinyaven/32/190443_2.png) [@Sinyaven](https://community.wanikani.com/u/Sinyaven)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2021, 12:23am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/13 "2021-08-27T00:23:02Z")
> [@DIO-Berry](#): > > Despite the first line, I can’t recall any non user generated issues with it You are right, it is probably tested well enough by now. I have removed the warning. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Rrwrex](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/rrwrex/32/520069_2.png) [@Rrwrex](https://community.wanikani.com/u/Rrwrex)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2021, 12:55am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/japanese-sentence-tree-diagram-appreciation-thread/53201/14 "2021-08-27T00:55:23Z")
> [@Belthazar](#): > > Just use spoiler tags inside the ruby tags. Of course! BBcode **inside** html tags intended for a markdown preprocessor. 🤯 I thought Japanese was complicated. Whatever parser this forum uses continues to amaze me. > [@DIO-Berry](#): > > I go the easy route and use this userscript 🙂 Just installed. Love it. Thanks!