a method of syntactically categorizing the constituents of english language sentences and a schema for depicting all possible categories to which the constituents of any sentence could belong . it also depicts the general order to appearance of the basic elements in a sentence and their alignment according to the functions they perform in a sentence , the alignment being informative to a schema user of certain relationships between constituents of a common function . in one embodiment of the schema , all possible forms and functions of foundation elements are depicted in a plurality of adjacent rows , all rows being parallel to an ordinate , each row containing only foundation elements of a common form in the general order of their common use in a sentence , the number of rows corresponding to the number of forms of foundation elements ; all possible forms and functions of modifying elements are depicted in a plurality of adjacent rows , all parallel to said ordinate , each row being ordered to correspond to the foundation elements which they modify , and each row containing only modifying elements of a common form , the number of rows corresponding to the number of forms of modifying elements . in another embodiment , all forms and functions of modifiers of modifying elements are also depicted in a plurality of adjacent rows parallel to said ordinate , each row being ordered to correspond to the modifying elements which they modify , and each row containing only modifiers of modifying elements of a common form .