Language levels: GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX Flashcards
Explain the concept of grammatical units.
The units of the English language are: words, phrases, clauses, and full sentences.
What is the difference between a phrase and a clause?
Phrase- This is a single piece of information made up of more than one word. It will not contain a subject and a verb.
Clause- This is a single piece of information made up of more than one word which contains a subject and a verb.
How many tenses are there in the English language?
Two: past and present. The future requires a modal verb such as ‘will’ and cannot be achieved through verb conjugation.
Define ‘aspect’.
Aspect refers to the duration of an event within a particular tense. Aspect allows us to understand how an event unfolds over time. The English language has four aspects: simple, progressive, perfect, and perfect progressive.
Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I wash the car.”
Simple present.
Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I am washing the car.”
Present progressive.
Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I have washed the car.”
Present perfect.
Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I have been washing the car.”
Present perfect progressive.
Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I washed the car.”
Simple past.
Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I was washing the car.”
Past progressive.
Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I had washed the car.”
Past perfect.
Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I had been washing the car.”
Past perfect progressive.
Give the four sentence functions and their uses.
Declaratives- statements that give information.
Imperatives- give orders, instructions, advice or directions
Interrogatives- ask questions
Exclamatives- expressive function convey force and end in an exclamation mark.
Define minor sentence and give an example.
Complete and meaningful statements that don’t have a subject and verb combination. (e.g. “Be quiet,” “Goodbye,” “Sounds good.”)
Define simple sentence.
A simple sentence must have a subject and a verb. It should express a complete thought.
Define compound sentence.
Two entirely meaningful clauses that are joined by a conjunction.
Define complex sentence.
A sentence containing a subordinate clause or subordinate clauses.
Define compound-complex sentence.
A sentence with two or more independent clauses and at least one subordinate clauses.
Define relative clause.
A clause connected to a main clause by a word such as “which”, “that”, “whom”, “whose”, “when”, “where”, or “who”. (e.g. “I met her in Paris, where I lived in the early nineties”).
Define syntactic parallelism.
A sentence where the structure of the clauses correspond with one another (e.g. “He gave me a dog and he gave me a friend”).
(Rhetorical devices) Define anaphora.
The repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive clauses.
(Rhetorical devices) Define epistrophe.
The repetition of words or phrases at the end of successive clauses.
(Rhetorical devices) Define symploce.
The combination of anaphora and epistrophe: the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning and end of successive clauses.
(Rhetorical devices) Define hypophora.
Asking a question and then answering it.
