Unit 4: Basic Grammar

The purpose of this unit is to introduce some elementary grammatical terminology including word class labels, and the major clause components.

You have probably heard of the "parts of speech", i.e. grammatical classes into which we can put words. Most people know something about nouns, adjectives and so on, especially if they have studied a classical or foreign language. Refresh your memory in Activity 1.

Activity 1

Which of the following terms refer to a "part of speech"? (Click the checkbox in the Yes or No column and feedback will be provided.)

Is the word a 'part of speech'?	Yes	No	Comments
noun
adjective
subjunctive
accusative
preposition
pronoun
adverb
phrase
verb
passive
article

There are several ways of dividing words into grammatical classes. One traditional method is based on the notion of reference introduced in Unit 2. There are things/entities in the world, and words which refer to these things/entities are nouns. There are also actions and words which refer to these actions are verbs. Nouns are "naming words" and verbs are "doing words". There are also qualities which we can ascribe to things. Words which name these qualities are adjectives. Then there are words which say something about the actions, for example how or when they are performed. These are known as adverbs. This method of word classification, while far from satisfactory, does successfully classify a very large number of words. Here are some examples in sentences:

Activity 2

Assign the following words to a part of speech category using the notional criteria summarised above. (Type it in the space provided next to the word.) Try this once without looking the words up in a dictionary. Make a note of any problems you encounter.

	part of speech	brief reason / problems
oxygen
click for feedback	noun	Some of these words are easy to assign according to notional criteria of the type discussed above (for example, 'nouns' refer to things and entities). But others do not fit so well, or even if they do, they seem to belong to more than one class. Oxygen, however, is a fairly straightforward noun. The only thing which makes it slightly special is that it is "uncountable" and has no plural form *oxygens.
difficult
feedback	adjective	Unproblematic. Examples: a difficult problem / Are you going to be difficult?
disperse
feedback	verb	Unproblematic, action word - They dispersed the crowd.
Birmingham
feedback	proper noun	This is a noun since it clearly refers to a thing/entity. But we need a sub-category of noun since it is clear that there is a difference between identifying an individual thing/entity and referring to one or more of a class of things/entities. Names of uniquely identified individuals are known as proper nouns (the meaning of"proper" here has to do with specificness rather than reality or decency). Common nouns refer to a class of things, or an example of a class of things, and are normally written with a small letter. Proper nouns lack some of the grammatical possibilities of common nouns, precisely because they identify uniquely.For example, it is odd to say *The Birmingham, since the function of the is to identify, which is unnecessary with Birmingham. An expression such as The Birmingham of the 1920s looks like an exception, but here we are really shifting the word from being a proper noun to being a common noun, even though we retain the capital letter. Birmingham is no longer a uniquely identified thing, but merely one of a number of possible "Birminghams".
beautifully
feedback	adverb	Straightforward - indicates the manner of some verbal process, 'She plays beautifully.'
utterly
feedback	adverb?	A more controversial adverb. It very rarely occurs as a word describing an action. Examples such as We reject utterly these clams or it failed utterly do occur, but there are very few verbs which can be accompanied by utterly in this way. The following invented examples all seem very dubious: he infuriates me utterly, she ridiculed the speaker utterly, his argument convinces me utterly, etc. Yet the word occurs quite happily in: I find him utterly infuriating, she made the speaker look utterly ridiculous, I am utterly convinced by his argument.So utterly is not typically used in the way that we have said adverbs are used. This forces us to do one of two things. Either we say utterly is not an adverb or we say that adverbs include a wider group of items than we at first allowed. Most grammars and dictionaries adopt the second course, and include especially words which modify adjectives such as utterly, very etc., but there is a strong case for arguing that words like this are not really adverbs, and need a special class to themselves.
you
feedback	pronoun	This is a pronoun, which is usually defined as a word which "stands in for a noun or noun phrase". This definition is not entirely satisfactory. It works in the following text: Tim's birthday party was on Sunday. It was a good occasion apparently. He was sixty, you know. Here, it can be said to "stand in for" Tim's birthday party and he for Tim. But if I add a further sentence: Such a pity we couldn't go, what does we "stand in for"? There is no obvious noun or noun phrase at all. It is probably better to think of pronouns in terms of their communicative purpose. They are items which are used when speaker and hearer share knowledge about reference. If I have just mentioned Tim, or his birthday party, or if I am talking about someone who is clearly visible, myself for example, further specification of reference is quite likely redundant. Then I can use a pronoun.
desperation
feedback	noun	Relatively straightforward, though we note that desperation is much less obviously a 'thing' or 'entity' than, say, brick, or Australia. Semantically, it could be thought of as referencing the mental process of despairing ('He despairs of ever finding the answer.'). Such nouns are sometimes classified as 'abstract'. We know that it is a noun by the slots it can fill in sentence structure and by the words by which it is accompanied. Most notably, it can be premodified by the article the ('I was saddened by the desperation he showed'), or by possessive pronouns ('Your desperation is shameful'). The ability to be premodified in this way is a characteristic of nouns. We note, also, that desperation is slightly special is that, like oxygen, it is "uncountable" and has no plural form *desperations.
slow
feedback	adjective or adverb	Examples: a slow learner, a slow train, a slow descent into hell. Slow can also be used in sentences like: You're going too slow. Here slow is an adverb. Using notional reasoning, one can say that it "describes the action of going". Using distributional reasoning, one can point to the place in the clause where such words come. Difficult, for example, is not used in this way, nor does it have a derived form used as an adverb. We say neither: *We managed it difficult nor *We managed it difficultly (although difficultly appears occasionally, and interestingly, in the speech of young children). Instead, if we need an adverb, we resort to a two-word substitute such as with difficulty.* The use of slow as an adverb raises some interesting questions about its relationship with slowly. Some might feel that using slow as an adverb is informal, or even incorrect. Yet the same judgement would never be made of fast (e.g. a fast learner and he learns fast.). The tendency for adjectives to be used as adverbs without changing their form seems to be on the increase in modern English, especially US English. Incidentally, the -ly ending on a word (e.g. beautifully), while often indicative of an adverb, is clearly not always so. Friendly, for example, is never used as an adverb, only as an adjective.
early
feedback	adjective or adverb	Similar behaviour to slow - can, as an adjective, indicate the quality of some noun (the early bird /the early train / early risers), or, as an adverb, specify some aspect of a verbal process ('She left early.').
resemble
feedback	verb	relatively straightforward, though does pose problems for traditional parts-of-speech definitions which hold that verbs are 'action words' - it's difficult to imagine a sense in which 'Pet owners resemble their pets.' could be seen as involving an 'action' - still a verb, nevertheless, due to its function in the clause.
thus
feedback	adverb	Also treated as an adverb in most reference books. In its most common use, illustrated by: Thus, death is not a result of sin, the behaviour of the word is quite different from the adverbs we looked at above. This simply shows what a capacious category "adverb" is. Sometimes words like this are known as "sentence adverbs" since they seem to say something about a whole sentence rather than just one part of it. Other examples are: actually, nevertheless, however and so on. There are a lot of these words, and they can be, and have been, broken down into many sub-categories.

Modern linguistics prefers to talk of word classes rather than "parts of speech". In many school grammars eight to ten classes are listed, but it might surprise you to know that the distinction between nouns, verbs and adjectives did not become conventionally accepted until mediaeval times. Plato assigned verbs and adjectives to the same class, while later Greek grammarians grouped nouns and adjectives together. If we look outside English, especially at completely unrelated languages such as Chinese, the distinction between adjectives, prepositions and verbs is much harder to sustain, and even in English it is not always easy to assign words unambiguously to a class. They often seem to belong to more than one, or to hover uncomfortably between two.

In the case of nouns and verbs, the "thingness" or "actionness" of a word is often uncertain. A word such as departure surely refers to an action, yet it is unquestionably a noun. Weigh does not seem to refer to an action in a sentence like Does it weigh much? Yet weigh is certainly a verb. Moreover, there are word classes where it is difficult to find any obvious reference to anything in the world. Pronouns refer - he, she it clearly point quite directly to entities, people in this case, but conjunctions do not seem to. What do because, if or although refer to?

Although there is no doubt that word classes have some connection with the way language refers to reality, linguistics assigns word classes on the basis of behaviour or function rather than on the basis of reference. This means that nouns belong to the same class because they behave in the same way, for example by being the subject of a sentence, or changing their form from singular to plural, both characteristics applying to nouns, but not to adjectives. The word departure may refer to an action, in a sense, but it does not behave in the way that verbs behave. For example, it cannot change its form to tell us something about the time of the action, as most verbs do. We do not say things like: The plane departured over an hour late. Likewise, although weigh does not seem to be very active, we do say things like the baby weighed 3.5 kilos, in which the form weighed clearly shows the time of this not very active event.

Multiple-class membership

A great many words in English may be used as both verbs and nouns. Thus we have a book (n) and to book (v), a laugh (n) and to laugh (v) and so on. There is a general tendency for nouns to drift into becoming verbs, e.g. email (n) and email (v), with its past tense emailed. The opposite tendency is also well-established in the language, e.g. to go and a go. These shifts are part of the productivity of the language.

Activity 3

Which of the following are always verbs, which are always nouns and which can be either verb or noun? In the case of those which can be either, select from the drop down menu, which you think came first, the verb or the noun.

	verb only	noun only	either	which came first? (click to reveal choices)
sit
chair
seat
stool
bench
drawer
shelves
bracket
fix
pigeon-hole

commentary

sit

This is almost always a verb, but not quite. The following text about a horse appears in the corpus: He is a very good rider, Mark had a sit on him and everything is in place. There are also examples such as went for a sit in the park. It is likely, though, that have a sit and go for a sit account for all instances of sit as noun. In this respect, sit takes part in a more general pattern in English whereby certain verbs are used as nouns after words like have, go for and take, e.g. have a swim, go for a drive, take a walk.. There are no instances of *take a sit in the corpus, and it seems to be very marginal as a noun.

chair

This is clearly both noun and verb, since you can chair a meeting. This meaning, though, only came into use in the 1920s, so the noun predates this by several hundred years. You should check this in the OED, where you will find other uses of chair as a verb..

seat

Similar to chair. You can seat a visitor in your best armchair (from 17th century). A room can seat 100 people (from 19th century). The connection between sit and seat is complex, and rooted in the Germanic history of English. Consult the OED for more information.

stool

Most people would naturally put this down as a noun only. Reference to the OED shows several meanings as a verb, but most of them seem quite outdated now, including the meaning of to excrete.

bench

Once again the OED surprises us with a verb meaning "to furnish with benches", which you will undoubtedly agree is a most useful addition to your vocabulary.

drawer

At last we have a word which is never a verb - only a noun.

shelves

This is clearly a plural noun. But there is also a verb to shelve, especially of library books, projects etc. There are no instances in our corpus of shelves as a verb, as in this fictitious newspaper headline: Blair shelves university salary review. Yet there is no reason why such an instance could not occur.

bracket

A noun and a verb.

fix

A verb and a noun. But which came first?

pigeon-hole

A noun and a verb, the latter being surprisingly common.

Class-Shifting

It is important to distinguish between class membership based on our knowledge of how a word typically behaves, and class membership in particular instances of use. Many words belong to two or more classes, as a result of their regular use in different grammatical contexts. We have already met some examples. However, speakers may also unilaterally reassign a word to a new class for a particular effect. If, just before dinner, someone says: "Have you gravied?", they presumably mean: "Have you made the gravy?" The reasons for taking the noun gravy and converting it into a verb are obscure; possibly the speaker himself does not know why he did this. It may be that making gravy is, or is considered by him to be, a bit of a palaver, and that the verb to gravy captures this better than the more literal to make the gravy. There are obviously limits to this, since if we constantly used nouns as verbs, or conjunctions as prepositions, the result would be confusion. Some kinds of reassignment are much more tolerable and likely than others. Noun to verb conversions are easily the most frequent in modern English, and even if to gravy is unlikely to catch on, plenty of other examples do. The next activity takes a jocular look at this phenomenon. First read this editorial from the Guardian:

Activity 4

Look at the table below, in which all the noun-verb conversions are extracted. In the columns to the right, say (a) whether you have seen the word in question used as a verb before and (b) whether you would use it as a verb yourself. Finally, (c) say whether the newly coined verb has the identical form to the noun from which it comes, or whether it is modified. For example, the word message is the same when used as a verb (to message) or as a noun (a message), while the verbal form, to diarise, is clearly different from its related noun form (there is no noun, a diarise). Since 1990, the noun-verb email has become quite common. Are there any others which should be added to this list?

	seen before?	use yourself?	same/modified?
example (8)
studio-produce (10)
gift (18)
top-score (19)
fixture (21)
rifle (21)
caveat (26)
doughnut (27)
exit (28)
expense (30)
diarise (32)
fax (34)
tandy (34)
modem (34)
message (35)
room-temperature (35)
prioritise (37)
detrain (41)

There are no comments on this activity

Central and marginal class membership

For any given class, a number of features can be expected. Some words will be obvious members of the class, because they have all or most of the features. Others may be marginal members. Crystal (1987:92) explains this point very clearly.

Let us exemplify with adjectives and assume that there are two main ways in which we know whether a word is an adjective or not. First, adjectives come in front of a noun. From a semantic point of view, we can say that they "describe" the noun. This does not mean that anything which comes in front of a noun is an adjective. But adjectives may come in front of nouns. The second criterion is that adjectives can come after the verb be, and they then "describe" the noun which comes in front of be. The two positions are known as attributive and predicative. Here are some examples:

Given these facts about adjectives, we can safely say that the following words are also adjectives: good, interesting, delicious, loud, scary etc. However, there are also plenty of adjectives which do not have both of these positional possibilities. Take the adjectives drunk and drunken . Generally, one comes in front of nouns, and the after be. We still want to call them adjectives, but they are not quite as completely adjectival as the first group.

Activity 5

Using your own feeling about the language, say whether the following adjectives are used both attributively and predicatively (as most adjectives are) or just one or the other. Put a tick in the relevant column. Try adding more examples to the pred. only column. Finally, are there any of these which seem less obviously adjectival than others?

both attrib. only pred.only more examples?

able

asleep

easy

fond

green

marital

prospective

tantamount

umbilical

woollen

comments / feedback

	both	attrib. only	pred. only
able	Ö
asleep			Ö
easy	Ö
fond	Ö
green	Ö
marital		Ö
prospective		Ö
tantamount			Ö
umbilical		Ö
woollen		Ö

You may not agree with these suggestions and one needs to add more information to make the table a sensible comment on these particular words. For example, fond occurs attributively in examples like fond memories and a range of other nouns. On the other hand, about two thirds of all uses of fend are in the expression fond of, which always occurs predicatively, and only refers back to animate subjects. We say fond memories, fond regards, fond kisses etc., but not: His memories were fond etc. So although this word is "both" it is not free to occur in both positions irrespective of meaning.

On the matter of which of these are less adjectival, tantamount is clearly the most marginal as an adjective, since it is not only restricted to the predicative position, but is also necessarily followed by the word to + further words. One could argue that tantamount to is an indissoluble unit, the function of which is less adjectival than prepositional. In this way tantamount differs from an ordinary predicative adjective such as asleep.

Activity 5 shows that the allocation of words to a class according to behavioural characteristics is not as straightforward as it seems at first. We can examine this problem again in the case of nouns. The class of nouns is easily the largest in the language, accounting for as many as 75% of all words. Let us say that one characteristic of nouns is that they can occupy the subject and object position of a clause. If you are not sure what this means, try to pick it up from the following discussion.

In clause 1, cricket is definitely a noun. Not only does it refer to a thing/entity, but it occupies the object slot in the clause - it is what the addressee likes. (In a clause such as Cricket is boring, Cricket occupies the subject slot in the clause.) In clause 2, we could use the same argument about swimming - and say that it is a sport like cricket, and again the object of the clause. Both words certainly feature in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as nouns. In clause 4, on the other hand, watching seems to be a verb - for two reasons. First, it has an object of its own, i.e. cricket . Second, if we want to say that this clause as a whole has an object, that surely has to be watching cricket (what the addressee likes), not watching. Therefore, watching is not the object, which removes one of the reasons for saying it is a noun. What about clause 3 and batting? Is batting in the same category as swimming, and therefore a noun, or like watching, and therefore a verb? The COD does list this as a noun (the action of hitting with a bat), but many people might say it is less of a noun than swimming. Incidentally, neither fielding nor bowling are listed as separate cricketing nouns by the COD. So are they nouns or verbs? There is in fact no easy answer to this question, and the example introduces the "instantial" nature of language. It may be the case that swimming is a noun in clause 1 above. But in I like swimming across the lake if it's not too cold, the word suddenly seems more verb-like. Linguists are quite tolerant of the idea that a word can belong to one class in one clause and a different class in a different clause, even though it means the same thing in both cases.

Consider now the case of words which come in front of nouns and seem to describe them. We have already said that this is a property of adjectives. But it is not necessarily the case that all words preceding nouns and describing them are adjectives. Look at these examples:

Activity 6

To which word classes would you assign the underlined words in the following sentences? Write down a brief justification for your choice. Click on the underlined words in the left column to receive feedback

I think you should state your aims more clearly.
Her room was in a terrible state.
We support state education.
Is that clear?
Clear off!
We weren't allowed to film the view of the river.
We weren't allowed to view the film of the river.
She played great in the final set.
She's a great player.
She played dead.

	word class	brief reason
	I think you should state your aims more clearly.
1. state
	A verb - unproblematic: 'stating' = a process - 'What did he do?, He stated his aims.'
	Her room was in a terrible state.
2. state
	A Noun - 'abstract' because it doesn't reference a concrete entity. We know it's a noun because of the slot it fills in clause structure - it's premodified by an article (a) and by an adjective indicating its quality (terrible).
	We support state education.
3.state
Problematic - state with this general meaning can act as a noun - 'National states emerged through the 18th and 19th centuries.', 'The state of the nation', 'The State of New South Wales'. Yet here the word occurs in front of, and is functioning to modify or specify another noun - it tells us which type of education. So do we label it a noun or an adjective, or perhaps have it both ways and call it an adjectival noun, or a noun used as an adjective? Let's consider the issue in a little more detail. We argued in the Unit that words which are normally nouns, but which are used in front of another noun to modify it, e.g. state education, do not become adjectives just because they are used in that position. Yet we have also argued that the basic principle for word class allocation should be functional or distributional, and we have seen, too, that many words can be either noun or verb depending on how they are used. This may look like a contradiction of principles, but it is not really. We need to introduce the concept of "productivity" in language. Take the case of words which can be either noun or verb. This certainly applies to a great many nouns and verbs. However, it is not completely open-ended, or, to use a jargon expression, completely "productive". As speakers, we are free to take any noun and arbitrarily use it as a verb, but if we do this we run the risk of not being understood, or at least ridiculed. The example of "Have you gravied?" worked in a specific context, but there are severe limitations. It is true that one can think up an infinite number of idiosyncratic conversions of this kind: "Have you food-mixered?" (i.e. repaired the food-mixer), "are you wallflowering?" (i.e. planting wallflowers), but they would almost certainly be one-off events, entirely bound by context. It is also true that nouns in certain semantic areas (e.g. communications) almost inevitably spawn a verb: fax, email etc. Yet this process too is not fully productive, since new coinages are often resisted or have a temporary life. To message now appears to have gained a foothold as a verb, but it is too soon to tell whether it will last. By contrast, the use of nouns as modifiers is a fully productive process. Any noun can be pressed into service as a modifier before another noun. Given this fact, it defeats the purpose of trying to establish word classes if we then say that any noun is also an adjective. Accordingly, we would certainly arguing for classifying this state as a noun used to modify a noun, or as a noun used adjectivally.
	Is that clear?
4. clear
Adjective used 'predicatively'. That is to say, it occurs after a 'describing' verb such as 'to be' and acts to indicate some quality or property of the noun with which it is linked. This functionality is, perhaps, a little more obvious in clauses such as, 'The water is clear.' and 'Your reasons are clear', where clear is being attributed as a quality of 'the water' and of 'your reasons'. Clear can also be used attributively (before the noun it qualifies) - 'This is a clear instance of contempt for the court.'
	Clear off!
5. clear
A verb, or more strictly, part of the compound verb to clear off - 'What did they do? They cleared off.' (Technically, such verbs are known as 'phrasal verbs' and will be discussed in greater detail in a later unit.)
	We weren't allowed to (A) view the (B) film of the river.
7A. view (answer supplied after 7B)
7B. film
	View = verb, film = noun
	We weren't allowed to film the view of the river.
8A. film (answer after 8B)
8B. view
	Film = verb, view = noun
	She's a great player
9. great
	Adjective (attributive) - provides a quality which is attributed to the noun player, acts to describe the qualities of the noun.
	She played great in the final set.
10. great
Adverb - acts to indicate the manner of the verbal process, 'how she played'. This and the previous example relate to the discussion of adjectives and adverbs in Activity 2. In this instance, the speaker has reclassified great as an adverb. Other adjectives to which this has happened, particularly in a sporting context, are bad, good, excellent, fantastic, brilliant. All of these appear regularly in utterances such as: "She played brilliant". It is interesting to speculate on the reasons. It may be a US trend originally, but that is not an explanation. It is worth noting that German neutralises the distinction between adjectives and adverbs: Ein guter Spieler, er spielte gut.
	She played dead.
11. dead
Adjective (or possibly adverb) - a quality which is indicated of the pronoun Subject of the clause (She). This example again raises the issue of the relationship between word class and instance. Normally dead is an adjective, as in a dead mouse (attributive) or this mouse is dead (predicative). In this case, the verb is play. Does dead describe the manner of her playing or does it describe her, with the verb having much the same function as the verb be? Here, the second interpretation has been selected, so dead is an adjective. In the first interpretation one would say that dead was an adverb. Often such predicative adjectives are linked to the Subject they qualify or describe by the verb to be. Other verbs which act in the same way are to seem ('She seems happy/dead.'), to look ('He looks terrible') and to become ('He became angry').

Sentences and Clauses

It is very difficult to define the word 'sentence'. Crystal (1987:94) claims that at least 200 different definitions are on record. In written English, the sentence is usually regarded as a stretch of language beginning with a capital letter and finishing with a full-stop. This is obviously not a grammatical definition, but we are all familiar with it and it is a useful enough rough guide to what a sentence is. The opening sentences of Dickens' Bleak House go like this: 'London. Michaelmas term lately over.' The language is telegraphic, almost note-form, perhaps because Dickens intends us to fix on a series of images. His text is like the verbal equivalent of a camera, first scanning across the city, and then zooming in, as he follows the path of the fog which penetrates into the fine detail of streets and buildings. Note-form language is usually casual, but here it is supremely skilful. The grammatical point to note is that telegraphic language lacks the full structure of formal written language, which normally consists of clauses.

Defining the word 'clause' is easier. Most definitions agree that a clause has certain structural properties, the most central of which is a verb. By this criterion, 'London' and 'Michaelmas term lately over� are not clauses, even though they are stylistic sentences. There are grounds for saying that the sentence is of limited usefulness as a unit of grammar. Despite this, the term is used a lot in grammatical work, so we need to have a narrower definition which excludes examples such as 'London'. The most useful working definition is 'a string of words which includes at least one free clause'. However, this simply drives us back to clauses again. We will return to the problem of sentences and clauses later in the course, but for now let us concentrate on the nature of the clause.

Elementary Clause Structure

The central element of the clause is the verb. It is possible to have one-word clauses, where there is just a verb: 'Jump!' More usually, there is at least a subject: 'I fell.' Transitive clauses have an object as well: 'He smashed my castle' In clauses where the verb is be, the noun following the verb is not the object but the complement: George III was a madman, This overcoat is wool. Clauses with be do not necessarily have a noun as complement. They may have an adjective, e.g. slugs are disgusting. It is possible to have 'subjectless' clauses, usually known as imperatives: Shut your mouth, Be a good boy.

Clauses often contain more information concerning the circumstances of whatever is stated by the more central elements listed above. For example: Jump quickly! , I fell off the table , He smashed my castle with his foot , He was a nuisance as a toddler ,The new Vice-Chancellor is here. These additional elements we shall call adjuncts here. Look at the examples and relate them back to this brief summary.

Notice especially that clause elements may consist of one or more words. The name given in most grammars to examples such as my castle, as a toddler or must not speak, which act as a unit to occupy a clause element, is phrase. We shall use that term, but also the term group to mean the same thing.

Activity 7

Insert parts of the following sentences into the table below. In this way, label the elements of the clauses as S, V, O, C or A. (Feedback is provided below.)

She's a great player.
You should state your aims more clearly.
Cricket is boring.
He batted beautifully all day.
Mind the step!
Were the ancient Patagonians aliens?
The best things in life are free.
Did Villa win last night?
Ferdinand de Saussure is the father of modern linguistics.
Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw.
She played dead.
Seldom have I heard such utter rubbish.

No.	S	V	O	C	A
	She's a great player.
1.
	You should state your aims more clearly
2.
	Cricket is boring.
3.
	He batted beautifully all day.
4.
	Mind the step!
5.
	Were the ancient Patagonians aliens?
6.
	The best things in life are free.
7.
	Did Villa win last night?
8.
	Ferdinand de Saussure is the father of modern linguistics.
9.
	Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw.
10.
	She played dead.
11.
	Seldom have I heard such utter rubbish.
12

Answers

	S	V	0	C	A
1.	She	's		a great player
2.	You	should state	your aims		more clearly
3.	Cricket	is		boring
4.	He	batted			1. beautifully 2. all day
5.		Mind	the step
6.	the ancient Patagonians	Were		aliens
7.	the best things in life	are		free
8.	Villa	Did ... win			last night
9.	Ferdinand de Saussure	is		the father of modern linguistics
10.	Pooh	rubbed	his nose		with his paw
11.	She	placed		dead
12.	I	have ... heard	such utter rubbish		Seldom

Jump!	V
I + fell	S+V
That boy + smashed + my castle	S+V+O
Was + George III + a madman?	V+S+C
Slugs + are + disgusting	S+V+C
The new Vice Chancellor + is + here	S+V+A
He + was + a nuisance + as a toddler	S+V+C+A
Shut + your mouth	V+O
Be + a good boy	V+C
Passengers + must not speak + to the driver	S+V+A

	both	attrib. only	pred.only	more examples?
able
asleep
easy
fond
green
marital
prospective
tantamount
umbilical
woollen

Word Classes