自考英语语法问答题总结.doc

自考现代英语语法总结Chapter One1. What are the four major types of sentence and what discourse functions are they normally associated with?Statements are normally associated with declaratives and primarily concerned with giving information. Questions are associated with interrogatives and primarily concerned with requiring information. Commands are associated with imperatives and primarily concerned with requiring actions. Exclamations are associated with exclamatives and primarily concerned with expressing the speakers impression of something.2. What are the verbs which transferred negation often occurs with? What is their shared semantic feature?The verbs which transferred negation often occurs with are: think, believe, suppose imagine and expect. They are the verbs that express “opinion”.3. Explain the differences between a tag question with a final rising tone and one with a final falling tone.With a rising tone, the question expresses the speakers neutral expectation of the hearers response and invites the hearer to verify the truth of the proposition in the statement. With a falling one, the speaker asks for the hearers confirmation of the statement. It can be regarded as similar to an exclamation.Chapter 44. Can the definite article be used for generic reference and the indefinite article for specific reference? If they can, give one example for each use.The definite article can be used for generic reference. For example, the panda is a rare animal. The panda here still denotes the whole species. The indefinite article can also be used for specific reference. For example, a dog chained at me when I was on my way home last night. Here a dog points to a particular, actual example of the class. Here “a” shows indefinite specific reference.5. What are some of the constraints that the double genitive is subject to?The second noun in the double genitive almost always refers to persons, never to objects, and the first noun usually has indefinite reference (typically premodified by the indefinite article and the second noun is always definite.)Chapter 56. Why do most contemporary English grammarians adopt a two-tense system?Because tense is a verb form. Morphologically only present tense and past tense have their forms of verbs. A language which has no verb forms has no tense.7. If tense is related to time, what is aspect related to?When ten points to the temporal location of an event or a state of affairs, aspect “reflects the way in which the verb action is regarded or experienced with respect to time.”8. Why is the past tense often used for politeness?Because the past tense can make a question or a statement or a suggestion less direct. It is more polite to use the past tense on the part of the speaker.9. Why can some non-progressive verbs occur in the progressive form?Some non-progressive verbs can occur in the progressive form, which happens in the circumstances where they suggest temporariness, gradual increase and decrease.10. List at least 4 means of expressing future time.1) Will / shall do sth (e.g. Ill come and see you next week.); 2) be going to do sth (e.g. My grandma is going to learn to drive.); 3) present progressive (e.g. The trees are losing their leaves soon.); and 4) simple present (e.g. Tomorrow is Saturday.)11. As a future time expression, what special meaning does the simple present impart?The simple present, as a future time expression, denotes especially the future of unusual definiteness, such as the future events that are determined in advance by calendar or timetable.Chapter 612. How many types of voice constraints for passive voice?There are three types of voice constraints for passive voice, namely, grammatical constraint, semantic constraint, and stylistic constraint.13. What are the two major types of the subjunctive mood?They are the be-subjunctive and the were-subjunctive.Chapter 714. What are the two major semantic categories of modal auxiliaries?The two major semantic categories of modal auxiliaries are predictive and non-predictive.15. What do modal auxiliaries in the predictive use generally express?in the predictive use, modal auxiliaries are generally concerned with the a speakers subjective assumption or assessment of probability, rather homogeneous in nature. And in most cases, indicates the speakers confidence (or lack of confidence) in the truth of his statement.Chapter 816. How many types in form can non-finite verbs be divided into? What are they?The non-finite verbs can be divided into three types. They are infinitive, -ing participle and ed participle.17. Give at least two grammatical functions of the ing participle.The ing participle can serve as the subject in a clause, the modifier of a noun, the object to a verb or the adverbial.18. what kind of grammatical functions can the ed participle perform? Give at least two kinds.Part of the verb phrase to form the perfective aspect or the passive voice; premodifier in the noun phrase; post modifier as a subject complement or an object complement.19. what is the meaning of dangling participle?When the subject of a participle is not expressed, it is normally understood to be the subject of the main clause. But the rule is often broken when the subject is vaguely understood to be “one”, “we”, “you”, people in general: 1) standing on the church tower the whole village could be seen; 2) caught in a traffic jam, it is easy to lose patience.Chapter 920. What are the differences between determiners and adjectives?Determiners and adjectives are different in five ways: 1) determiners usually precede adjectives in pre-modification; 2) The choice of determiners is often determined by the head word but not that of adjectives; 3) Adjectives describe the head word by showing its characteristics, but determiners determine the head word by identifying or quantifying; 4) adjectives can post-modify the head word, but not determiners (except enough); and 5) adjectives have comparative forms, inflectional or periphrastic, but not determiner (except few, little, many and much).Chapter 1121. What are the similarity and difference between coordination and subordination?Coordination and subordination are the two important ways in which two or more units are combined into larger and more complex units. But coordination is realized by coordinators which join units at the same level. For example, Peter is a doctor and Mary is a nurse. Subordination is realized by subordinators which join units at different levels so that they form a hierarchy. For example, I am wondering whether to punish him or not.Chapter 1222. List the types of antecedents.The antecedent is divided into nominal antecedent and non-nominal antecedent. Nominal antecedents fall into different subclasses: they may be common nouns or proper nouns, personal pronouns or demonstrative pronouns. Non-nominal antecedents can be subdivided into three types: clause, verb phrases, predicative adjective.23. What is a double relative clause? How many types of the double relative clause do we have?Double relative clause is a type of multiple postmodification which is realized by more than one relative clause modifying the same head word. It falls into two types: one that consists of parallel clauses and the other of hierarchical clauses. Chapter 1324. How many types of time adjuncts do we have?We have three types of time adjuncts: when-adjuncts, duration-adjuncts and frequency-adjuncts.25. Provide examples to illustrate style-disjuncts and content-disjuncts.Style-disjuncts express the speakers attitude towards what is being said. For example, Frankly, he isnt working hard enough. Content-disjuncts denot the speakers comment on the content of what is being said. For example, Obviously, she could deal with these problems. One formal criterion that helps to distinguish the two types of disjuncts is whether or not we can insert the word speaking.26. What is the difference between a coordinator and a conjunct?Conjuncts are different from coordinators in that most conjuncts are mobile but not coordinators which are put before the clause that they introduce, and coordinators are mutually exclusive, but not with conjuncts.Chapter 1427. Explain the three principle of concord with examples.The three complementary principles of concord are the grammatical principle, the notional principle and the principle of proximity.Pronoun has referential meanings. When it is used, it must refer to a noun previously mentioned in the context. This noun is its antecedent from which the reader or the hearer know the identity of the pronoun. In this case, a pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number, in gender, in person, otherwise the identity of the pronoun can be ambiguous. That is why pronoun co-reference often