How to write/ analyse a complex sentence ...

In this blog, we will look at a complex sentence and how it is written or analysed to understand it better. We have used Reed-Kellog sentence diagramming standard to illustrate our sentences written in the process. It helps the visual learner immensely.

I have copied the following sentence from the one of the articles sent to me through social media.

Notably, all the crew members aboard the container vessel which rammed into the bridge were Indians.

Structurally, the sentence is a complex sentence, consisting of a main clause ("all the crew members aboard the container vessel were Indians") and a subordinate clause ("which rammed into the bridge").

This sentence's readability is fair in my opinion. You can share your views as well in the comments section of this blog.

I thought why not I share how a complex sentence is crafted in real life? I would also like to draw sentence diagrams side by side to aid our understanding further.

First, a core sentence is crafted with no context.

Here is that sentence.

Level 1: All crew members were Indians.

In the following sentence diagram it clearly shows that "Indians" word is playing a subject complement role. It is a predicate noun which renames the subject "members" after the linking verb "were". The slant line which is drawn upto the baseline between verb and the predicate noun shows that it is a subject complement. Also the words "all" and "crew" are slant lines drawn below the baseline represent adjectives which describes the noun.

Now the subject is enhanced in Level -1 sentence to make it more  contextual and precise. It is highlighted in bold.

Now the sentence becomes as follows.

Level 2: All crew members who were aboard the container vessel were Indians.

Here the bold text is an adjective clause adding more description to the subject of the independent clause of the Level 2 complex sentence. In the following diagram shows the sentence diagram of this complex sentence. Here both independent and dependent clauses are drawn separately and independent and dependent clauses are connected through a dotted line where the independent clause subject is an antecedent to the dependent clause relative pronoun such as "who" here. This dotted line need not be straight.

Level 2.1 

Here the restrictive adjective clause is converted to a reduced clause by removing who were from the restrictive clause in the Level 2 sentence.

Now the sentence becomes as follows:

All crew members aboard the container vessel were Indians.

Here a dependent adjective clause is reduced to an adjective phrase. Here the preposition phrase by form is adding value to the subject and functioning like an adjective phrase. Overall a complex sentence is reduced to a simple sentence. It is visually represented in the following sentence diagram. You can see how complexity is reduced.

Level 3:  

Some more situational information is beefed up for the container vessel through an adjective clause in the Level 2 sentence. As it is restrictive, let us add a restrictive adjective clause using that and not using which. For non-restrictive clauses use which.

All the crew members aboard the container vessel that rammed into the bridge were Indians.

Level 4: The writer's opinion/attitude is added for the entire sentence by using Notably to emphasize the entire sentence. These types of adverbs are called disjunct adverbial.

A disjunct adverbials express the speaker's attitude, evaluation, or viewpoint towards the information conveyed in the sentence. They often appear at the beginning or end of a sentence and are set off by commas. Examples include "frankly," "honestly," "fortunately," and "interestingly."

Now the final sentence is as follows:

Notably, all the crew members aboard the container vessel that rammed into the bridge were Indians.

Therefore to understand a complex sentence, one has to peel down non-important contextual information to reach the core sentence of it.  Then add up the peeled items one by one to reach to final one to understand the meaning of a complex sentence.

In this blog if one goes through the blog from the top to bottom, it helps one to craft a complex sentence. Otherwise, it helps one to understand a given complex sentence.