tmnaati UKAMMAR FOR TODAY
PHRASES
73
1. (her interest in the coins of Roman Britain) -
2. (the leader of the revolution in October)
3. (the courage of a stag at bay)
4. (a battle of words in Parliament)
5. (the fall of Rome in 1527)
6. (the highest rate of inflation in Europe)
7. (a father of ten children with a criminal record).
Exercise 4c      (answers on p. 203)
The following are NPs in which the order of premodifiers is scrambled:
1. sisters, two, Cinderella's, ugly'
2. jade, idol, carved, green, a, small
3. designs, interlocking, Chinese, intricate, old, those,' all
4. old, disgusting, Victorian, a, drawings, few, quite
5. brilliant, new, Moldwarp's, hypothesis, geological
6. cylindrical, second, Morgan's, steam, condenser, revolutionary
7. a, tower, church, Gothic; grey, ancient
8. first, hundred, tourists, the, foreign, all, almost
9. responsibilities, moral, new, his, heavy -10.   life, hectic, my, social, London.
A. Unscramble the words into their correct grammatical order. (In some cases there may be more than one possible order.)
B. In doing A, you have exercised your ability, as a speaker of English, to apply rules for ordering premodifiers in an NP. Try to formulate these rules. First, work out the order in which these classes normally occur if they are combined: N, e, GP, Aj, d, Av. Second, if there is more than one member of the same class in the same NP, are there any principles for deciding in which order to put them? -
(Exercise 4d     (answers on p. 204)■■■
In the following examples, give function labels and form labels for each of the words and phrases which are elements of each NP. For example, the NP the new factory herein Lancaster may be analysed:
(!£the ^new ^factory ^vhere ^.(in Lancaster)).
1. she
2. the skeleton in the cupboard
3. that strange feeling
4. half the people present
5. Stanley's historic meeting with Livingstone at Ujiji
6. all those utterly fruitless afternoon meetings of the committee last year.
lExercise 4e      (answers on p. 205)
The most important category of pronouns is that of the personal pronouns. In Table A A the personal pronouns are arranged according to distinctions traditionally known as person (first, second, third), number (singular, plural), case (subject, object, genitive, etc.)1 and gender (masculine, feminine, neuter). Often these distinctions are neutralised, which means that the same form has to go in two different boxes (e.g. this is true of boxes 3 and 11). Complete the table by filling in the numbered gaps.
Table 4.4
Person		First		Second'		Third			
Number*-	FUNCTION	Sing.	Plur.	Sing.	Plur.	Singular			Plural
Gender-»-Case|						Masc.	Fem.	Neut.	
Subject	H	1	2 :	3 '•' ■	4	5	she	7	8
Object	H.	9	us	11	12	him	14	15	16
.Reflexive	H	17	18	yourself	yourselves	21	22	23	themselves
Genitive	U.	my	26	27	28	29	30	its	32
	H	mine	34	35	36	37	38	-	40
Exercise 4f (preliminary consideration of constructions to be reexamined later)
Examine these sets of sentences in which the VPs are italicised, and then describe as well as you can: (i) the rules for forming constructions •b'-f below, and (ii) the circumstances under which the dummy auxiliary do is used in English:
c.
Ordinary Declaratives
She is working. They had eaten them. She works hard. They made a mistake.
Questions
Is she working? Bad they eaten them? Does she work hard? Did they make a mistake?
b. Negative Sentences
She is not working. They had not eaten them. She does not work hard. They did not make a mistake.
d. Emphatic Sentences
Yes, she IS working. Yes, they HAD eaten them. Yes, she DOES work hard. Yes, they DID make a mistake.
The object form of the pronoun is not limited to pronouns functioning as object. In what other functions is the object form used? (See further section 11.4.)
I,
74
ENGLISH GRAMMAR FOR TODAY
e. Tag Questions
She's working, isn't she?
They'd eaten them, hadn't they?
She works hard, doesn't she? They made, a mistake, didn't they?
f. Comparative Clauses
-   She'* working harder than Bill
- iS. .
They'd eaten more than we had. ..■ ■
She works harder than I do. They wcde more mistakes than vie did.
PHRASES
71
F.
Adverb phrases (AvP): {Af1} H {Mn} where H (head) is an Av, and M is as in AjPs.
Verb phrases (VP): {Awe} {Awe} {Awe} {Aux} Mv where, all Aux are v (operator-verbs), and
Mv is either v (operator-verb) or V (full-verb).
The functions of these phrase classes in the clause can be summarised as
shown in Figure 4.3. The arrow X-«~ Y is to be interpreted: 'X may
be a Y'. We turn in Chapter 5 to a more detailed description of how phrases behave in clauses. ,
S
Subject
Figure 4.3
P O C
Predicator      Object   ' Complement
A
Adverbial
4.6 Summary
The following, then, are the formal structures of the six types of
phrase: ;w\
A. Noun phrases (NP): {Mn} H [Mn]
whereH (head) may be: N, pn, Aj, e, or GP
jlf before//(premodifiers) may be: d, e, Aj, N, GP, etc. M after H (postmodifiers) may be : PP, NP, Av, Aj* relative clause, etc.
B. Prepositional phrases (PP): p {Mn} H {Mn} where p is a preposition, and
M, H, and M are exactly as in noun phrases.
C. Genitive phrases (GP):{Mn} H {Mn} 's where's is the genitive particle, and
M, H, and M are as in noun phrases (complex postmodifiers, however, are rare in GPs).
D. Adjective phrases (AjP): {Mn} H{Mn} where # (head) is an Aj
M before //(premodifiers) are normally Av
M after H (postmodifiers) are PP, Av, and some clauses.
Exercises
Exercise 4a     (answers on p. 203)
Which phrases, in the following, are main and which are subordinate?
1. [(Mary) (had) (a little lamb)].
2. [(The fleece (of the little lamb)) (was) (as white (as snow))].
3. [(Everyone (in town)) (admires) (the whiteness (of the fleece (of (Mary's)little lamb)))].
Exercise 4b :   (answers on p. 203)
Examples (24) and (25) on p.62 illustrate a possible ambiguity of prepositional phrases. To which of the examples (p. 72) do these descriptions apply:
(a) Two PPs postmodify the same head (.. .H (PP) (PP)).
(b) One PP is subordinate to another PP (.. .H (p.. .H (PP)).
(c) The interpretation is ambiguous between (a) and (b).