Last modified 25 February 2011
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Instructions
Complete the following exam in a computer file, and upload your file to the
Tests and Quizzes module in Owlspace. Type your name on the first page
in your Word file. Give your file a title with
your last name in it and the midterm number, e.g. LASTNAMEmidterm1.doc
or similar, before uploading to Owlspace.
Honor Code:
Honor code: Work alone and don't discuss the exam with others until
after the due date. The midterm is open book, open notes. You can
look anywhere in our textbook if you want to get the details at the
lowest levels correct, and of any constructions we have not done. But
until we get to those specific structures, I will not mark details of
undiscussed structures wrong. I will focus on basic sentence
structure and any details or issues
discussed in class. Label each node with both a function and a
structure (syntactic category), using the format in the book, namely
function: category. Be as specific as you can about the
function. (I.e. if there is a more specific function than 'head' or
'complement', use it. ) Distinguish as best you can between
complements and adjuncts.
For the parsing, if you are a non-native speaker or just don't know how to classify a word into a part of speech, you can check a good dictionary. Be aware that sometimes dictionaries use a traditional classification that is not consistent or internally coherent; or they are just wrong. So try to reason out what part of speech a word might be, based on what you've learned from book and class.
Use the online program phpSyntaxTree (link is in the Resources module) to draw syntactic trees for each of the 3 numbered sentences below.
To submit your parses, embed the trees as .png images into your midterm file. Alternatively, you can upload the trees in a separate document. (I haven't figured out how you can do this yet so that it will be together with the rest of your exam, but we'll find a way.)
1. For several days, the square had been full of crowds demanding an end to the rule of President Hosni Mubarak.
2. The military establishment has long been the most powerful institution in the country.
3. [context: people in crowd are talking to soldiers in their midst. Parse the sentence in quotes.]
"You will shoot at us if you are given the order!"
[Sources of sentences: The New Yorker, February 2011]
The following sentences were produced by non-native speakers of English.
Determine what grammatical errors there are in each sentence, and explain what each error is, using the appropriate grammatical terminology. What about the grammar does the speaker apparently not understand?
Describe how to fix each error to get the sentences to mean what you think the writers most likely meant to say. You can use trees for clarity if you wish, but be sure to explain your analysis of the problems and solutions in words.
If fixing the grammar still does not mean what you think the speaker likely meant, explain what problem(s) (semantic or pragmatic, or word choice problems) still remain.
Example:
Ex1. I'm very glad contact to you.
The speaker may just have the order of two words wrong, possibly because they did not understand that the predicate complement: ADJ glad licenses an infinitival complement introduced by to. contact should be that complement. Switching 'to' and 'contact' will produce a grammatical sentence:
Fix 1. I'm very glad to contact you.
However, given that to makes some sense here in the meaning 'directed towards', it is also possible that the speaker considered to you to be a dative-marked argument of contact, because contact is a speech action something like talk. So they could be applying the analogy "talk to you" --> "contact to you". `
Then the possible fixes would be:
a. adding infinitival marker to after glad; and removing the "dative" to before you. The effects are the same as the above fix, but the analysis is different.
b. adding make before contact to correct the predicate; and replacing the incorrect preposition to (which semantically makes sense but is not the conventional preposition licensed by make contact).
Corrected result:
Fix 2. I'm very glad to make contact with you.
In this case the sentence might be a little pragmatically strange too, since it resembles a social formula for the beginning or ending of a discourse (e.g., cases like I'm very happy/pleased/glad to meet you; I'm very happy/pleased/glad to have met you, etc.), but the lexeme contact, whether as noun or verb, is not usual in these formulas.
Sentences to explain and fix:
1. Let me know that is true or not.
[The next two items to describe and fix are about the writer's taking an exam in a foreign country. An invigilator is an exam proctor, someone who oversees the exam's distribution and watches out for cheating.]
2. I even saw there was a student brought a big and thick dictionary but kept by the exam invigilator and when the dictionary being returned to her, she felt embarrassed about it.
3. I'm not sure whether everything supposed to be in such way in overseas universities because this is my first time having an exam out of my country.
[Source of sentences: my personal correspondence; and the internet]
Find examples of the specific syntactic structures and categories listed in 1-11 in the passage below. Number the examples you find with the number of the type of construction or word form listed. (You might find more than one example for some of the types and its fine to include more than one. You do not need, however, to find all the examples of each type in the passage. )
Example:
E1. a coordination of two gerund-participle phrases.
E1. "hiring mostly non-actors and employing teen-agers as writers and consultants."
(In your answer, you can use quotes, or underlining, or other typographical indication that you are citing text.)
These kids might as well be naked: they don't care who sees them, and they don't care what people think. They're in their own world, beyond the reach of adults. Which means that the adults in their lives have done something very wrong--and what adult wouldn't be threatened by that message?"Skins" is a remake of a British series, created by the father-son team of Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain, which is now in its fifth season. (The title is British slang for cigarette rolling papers.) Unusually for such cases, the U.K. creative team is genuinely involved in the American remake and is using the same basic approach here as in England-- hiring mostly non-actors and employing teen-agers as writers and consultants. The original is set in the port city of Bristol; the American version takes place in an unnamed northern city and was filmed in Toronto. While Canada is not exactly what we think of as a foreign country, I did register the feeling that I was watching things happening elsewhere, outside the country I live in. Perhaps that's why, even though MTV touts the series as a frank look at teen-age life today, I had the over-all sense that the show was not entirely real. And, of course, it isn't--it's a scripted series. But if you've seen any of the British version, which is shown here on BBC America, the Stateside iteration feels a little soft around the edges. One tries to avoid overusing the word "gritty" in characterizing a certain kind of British show, but, even apart from subject matter, there is an unsparing quality to much British drama, and it requires viewers to tolerate a high level of discomfort. The American "Skins" doesn't really ask that of us.
[From the New Yorker, February 2011, from the column "On Television", subtitle: "Anything Goes: The kids are not all right in "Skins.", by Nancy Franklin. ]
Types of syntactic structures and categories to identify in the passage:
1. a negative construction with an auxiliary.
2. a predicate complement that is an adjective.
3. a long passive.
4. a noun with a clausal complement.
5. a predicate complement that is a noun phrase.
6. an infinitival with a gerund-participle complement.
7. an existential construction.
8. an adjectival passive.
9. a compound noun functioning as a modifier.
10. a past progressive construction.
11. a short passive.
12. a preposition introducing a non-finite clause.
Modal verbs, called "modals" for short, are a subset of auxiliaries with special syntactic properties differentiating them from other auxiliaries.
In class we learned about "quasi-modals", which have some syntactic properties of other modal auxiliaries but also one or more properties of ordinary verbs (called lexical verbs).
Why can the English verb ought be considered a quasi-modal? Describe the syntactic properties in which ought is like modal auxiliaries, using examples to demonstrate, and then those in which it resembles ordinary lexical verbs, also with examples. Note any peculiarities of this verb that you find.
Is ought more like a modal auxiliary, or more like a lexical verb?
© 2011 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 25 February 2011