Language levels: GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX

Question 1

Explain the concept of grammatical units.

Answer 1

The units of the English language are: words, phrases, clauses, and full sentences.

Question 2

What is the difference between a phrase and a clause?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

How many tenses are there in the English language?

Answer 3

Two: past and present. The future requires a modal verb such as ‘will’ and cannot be achieved through verb conjugation.

Question 4

Define ‘aspect’.

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I wash the car.”

Answer 5

Simple present.

Question 6

Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I am washing the car.”

Answer 6

Present progressive.

Question 7

Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I have washed the car.”

Answer 7

Present perfect.

Question 8

Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I have been washing the car.”

Answer 8

Present perfect progressive.

Question 9

Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I washed the car.”

Answer 9

Simple past.

Question 10

Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I was washing the car.”

Answer 10

Past progressive.

Question 11

Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I had washed the car.”

Answer 11

Past perfect.

Question 12

Give the tense and aspect of the following sentence: “I had been washing the car.”

Answer 12

Past perfect progressive.

Question 13

Give the four sentence functions and their uses.

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

Define minor sentence and give an example.

Answer 14

Complete and meaningful statements that don’t have a subject and verb combination. (e.g. “Be quiet,” “Goodbye,” “Sounds good.”)

Question 15

Define simple sentence.

Answer 15

A simple sentence must have a subject and a verb. It should express a complete thought.

Question 16

Define compound sentence.

Answer 16

Two entirely meaningful clauses that are joined by a conjunction.

Question 17

Define complex sentence.

Answer 17

A sentence containing a subordinate clause or subordinate clauses.

Question 18

Define compound-complex sentence.

Answer 18

A sentence with two or more independent clauses and at least one subordinate clauses.

Question 19

Define relative clause.

Answer 19

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”).

Question 20

Define syntactic parallelism.

Answer 20

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”).

Question 21

(Rhetorical devices) Define anaphora.

Answer 21

The repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive clauses.

Question 22

(Rhetorical devices) Define epistrophe.

Answer 22

The repetition of words or phrases at the end of successive clauses.

Question 23

(Rhetorical devices) Define symploce.

Answer 23

The combination of anaphora and epistrophe: the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning and end of successive clauses.

Question 24

(Rhetorical devices) Define hypophora.

Answer 24

Asking a question and then answering it.

Question 25

(Rhetorical devices) Define chiasmus.

Answer 25

Reversing or inverting the words of one clause in the next (e.g. ‘Ask not what you can do for your country but what your country can do for you.’)

Question 26

(Rhetorical devices) Define andiplosis.

Answer 26

Repeating the last word of one clause in the next one. (e.g. “I love chocolate. Chocolate is what keeps me going.”)