Michael Cysouw
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Michael Cysouw
@cysouw.bsky.social
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Graphical Grammar: a history of visual analysis of syntactic structure before Chomsky and Tesnière

Radical-open-access manuscript in progress: https://cysouw.github.io/graphicalgrammar/
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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.
January 27, 2026 at 11:32 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.
January 24, 2026 at 10:12 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.
January 9, 2026 at 11:05 AM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.
January 8, 2026 at 6:12 PM
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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.
December 28, 2025 at 12:26 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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
December 26, 2025 at 10:40 AM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.
December 21, 2025 at 10:22 AM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.
December 18, 2025 at 12:39 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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."
December 11, 2025 at 3:38 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.
December 8, 2025 at 5:45 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.’
December 4, 2025 at 11:53 AM
cysouw.bsky.social
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."
November 29, 2025 at 7:44 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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).
November 24, 2025 at 12:02 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.
July 4, 2025 at 12:58 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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."
July 3, 2025 at 2:45 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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!
June 5, 2025 at 3:55 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.
June 4, 2025 at 4:17 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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.')
May 14, 2025 at 11:01 AM
cysouw.bsky.social
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

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"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."
May 13, 2025 at 6:53 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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?
May 9, 2025 at 9:16 AM
cysouw.bsky.social
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...
May 7, 2025 at 5:49 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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)
May 3, 2025 at 10:14 AM
cysouw.bsky.social
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
March 31, 2025 at 10:26 AM
cysouw.bsky.social
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!
March 26, 2025 at 8:06 PM
cysouw.bsky.social
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)
March 26, 2025 at 11:58 AM