QUIZZIE 1       VALENCIES AND SYNTACTIC ROLES

For each of the following sentences, identify the valency of each clause and the syntactic role of each word or group of words

Simon was a charming man.

He met many people at the governor's ball.

They all told him their stories.

Each of the stories left Simon a little more nervous.

He discreetly left before the music stopped.

The drunk at the bar was complaining loudly about his boss.

Boris had never heard such a racket.

After a long day's work, Boris was irritable.

He just wanted a little peace and quiet.

Boris walked over to the drunk.

He calmly knocked the drunk off the barstool.

Then he called the man a taxi and left him on the curb.

The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed the news went from her eyes.

They stayed keen and bright.

Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her.

A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.

But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.

She opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

QUIZZIE 2      Basic Phrase Structures           Suggestion - print this at double spacing or greater

PART 1 -- In the following passages, underline all verb phrases and identify the valency, tense, aspect, and voice of each.

Scientists at the European Space Agency are breathing a sigh of relief after receiving a signal from their comet-chasing spacecraft. Rosetta was dormant for 31 months in an attempt to conserve power as it made its way closer to the comet 67PChuryumov-Gerasimenko. The spacecraft's alarm clock went off hours before a signal was heard, providing a fairy-tale ending to a tense chapter once it had powered up sufficiently to phone home. The scientists can finally sleep easy knowing Rosetta, in space since 2004, is functioning and set to land on the comet in November.

Alice Dunbar

Manuela was tall and slender and graceful, and once you knew her the lithe form could never be mistaken.  She walked with the easy spring that comes from a perfectly arched foot.  To-day she swept swiftly down Marais Street, casting a quick glance here and there from under her heavy veil as if she feared she was being followed.  If you had peered under the veil, you would have seen that Manuela's dark eyes were swollen and discoloured about the lids, as though they had known a sleepless, tearful night.  There had been a picnic the day before, and as merry a crowd of giddy, chattering Creole girls and boys as ever you could see boarded the ramshackle dummy-train that puffed its way wheezily out wide Elysian Fields Street, around the lily-covered bayous, to Milneburg-on-the-Lake.  Now, a picnic at Milneburg is a thing to be remembered for ever.  

PART 2 -- In the following passages, underline all noun phrases (you may need multiple lines if one NP is contained with another).  Circle all pronouns and identify their referent if it appears in the text.

We've known that shift work and jet lag make us feel rundown and, sometimes, miserable, but scientists at the Sleep Research Centre in Surrey, England, now think they know why. They have found that flying into different time zones and working the late shift can cause major disruptions to more than 1,000 genes our bodies use to function and protect our health. The sleep experts believe health problems linked to jet lag and sleep deprivation may have their roots in these disruptions. The news gives those considering their next business trip or taking an extra shift something to sleep on.

2010 Alabama Course of Study: English Language Arts

Technology significantly enhances the curriculum and engages students actively in the learning process and therefore should be an integral part of the English language arts classroom. Furthermore, technology allows teachers the opportunity to extend learning experiences beyond the textbook to the realm of primary sources and alternate methods of instruction by appealing to various student learning styles. Teachers must incorporate progressive technological tools that interest and motivate students to use the English language for both construction of meaning and creative expression. Because access to ever-changing technology varies across the state, standards in this document are not dependent on a particular technology, but may be met through available local resources. Nonetheless, providing teachers with current technology is highly recommended if students are to have increased opportunities to develop literacy levels sufficient to meet the demands of the twenty-first century.

PART 3 -- In the following passages, circle all prepositions and underline their objects.

Stephen Crane

Some Rum Alley children now came forward.  The party stood for a moment exchanging vainglorious remarks with Devil's Row.  A few stones were thrown at long distances, and words of challenge passed between small warriors.  Then the Rum Alley contingent turned slowly in the direction of their home street.  They began to give, each to each, distorted versions of the fight.  Causes of retreat in particular cases were magnified.  Blows dealt in the fight were enlarged to catapultian power, and stones thrown were alleged to have hurtled with infinite accuracy.  Valor grew strong again, and the little boys began to swear with great spirit.

2010 Alabama Course of Study: English Language Arts

It is important for teachers to provide students with a variety of authentic texts, allow students to self-select some of their reading materials, and increase efforts to inspire within students a genuine love of reading. In addition, efforts should be made to increase the quantity of reading to help students expand their reading abilities and bring them into regular contact with new words, sentence structures, and paragraph and story structures.

To help students cultivate a love for reading and an appreciation of literature, teachers should provide students with opportunities for sustained silent reading of student-selected, high-interest reading materials. Such opportunities allow students to naturally develop increased reading fluency and comprehension. However, self-selection of reading materials is not intended to replace direct instruction on assigned or more challenging reading selections. Direct instruction in reading strategies does not detract from reading enjoyment; rather it increases the pleasure that may be gained from reading literature. Substantial amounts of reading time in the classroom should be spent providing instruction in comprehension strategies such as identifying main idea, making inferences, identifying author purpose, distinguishing fact and opinion, summarizing, predicting, and questioning.

THE CHALLENGE [required for graduate students]- In the following passages, circle prepositions, bracket verb phrases, and underline noun phrases (treat pronouns as noun phrases).

95 THESES ON PHILOLOGY by WERNER HAMACHER

2

The elements of language explicate one another: they offer additions to what has hitherto been said, speak for one another as witnesses, as advocates, and as translators which open that which has been said onto that which is to be said: the elements of language relate to one another as languages. There is not one language but a multiplicity; not a stable multiplicity but only a perpetual multiplication of languages. The relation that the many languages within each individual language, and all individual languages, entertain to one another is philology. Philology: the perpetual extension of the elements of linguistic existence.

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The fact that languages must be philologically clarified indicates that they remain obscure and reliant upon further clarifications. The fact that they must be expanded philologically indicates that they never suffice. Philology is repetition, clarification, and multiplication of impenetrably obscure languages.

Rene Descartes

Whence it follows, that the light of nature, or faculty of knowledge given us by God, can never compass any object which is not true, in as far as it attains to a knowledge of it, that is, in as far as the object is clearly and distinctly apprehended. For God would have merited the appellation of a deceiver if he had given us this faculty perverted, and such as might lead us to take falsity for truth [when we used it aright]. Thus the highest doubt is removed, which arose from our ignorance on the point as to whether perhaps

our nature was such that we might be deceived even in those things that appear to us the most evident. The same principle ought also to be of avail against all the other grounds of doubting that have been

already enumerated. Mathematical truths ought now to be above suspicion, since these are of the clearest. And if we perceive anything by our senses, whether while awake or asleep, we will easily discover the truth provided we separate what there is of clear and distinct in the knowledge from what is obscure and confused. There is no need that I should here say more on this subject, since it has already received ample treatment in the metaphysical Meditations; and what follows will serve to explain it

still more accurately.