How to parse a sentence

weatherguy

I remember in first year of secondary school our English teacher taught us how to parse a sentence. I have forgotten how to do it and was wondering if someone hear could enlighten me please.

My teach use to write the sentence vertically on the blackboard and across from each word he would write whether it was a noun, adjective, preposition.

So, below I have written a sentence and would really appreciate someone parsing it for me.

Angela
walked
to
the
shops
in
the
rain
wearing
her
wellingtons
gabardine
mackintosh
belted
and
buttoned
when
she
met
her
friend
Paul

pickarooney

I don't think a vertical list is a particularly suitable layout for sentence parsing. Simply categorising each word as a verb, noun, adjective etc. is not parsing and I'm pretty sure that, if you don't know what each of the above is and the dictionary will tell you otherwise.

How in-depth do you want to go with parsing? Is it of any real benefit to you to know where a noun phrase begins and ends or what the scope of a subordinate clause is?

edit: sorry if the above sounds dismissive; it's not meant to read that way

weatherguy

Well, the teacher back in those far flung days called is parsing. But we never went into any great detail in terms of clauses etc. Pretty basic stuff really.