Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Test your knowledge

Exercise 17

Why are these sentences ill-formed?

(1) a *Penny promised.

b *The boy slept a car.

c *Garry gave Greg.

d *Gave a cent to Marion.

e *Adam ate an apple for Anne.

f *Daniel danced Dora.

Exercise 18

Identify the thematic roles assigned by each predicate and identify the Cases of the

DPs as well.

(1) a Who do you think Izzy will invite?

b Terry thinks that the car has been stolen.

c Frank will fly from New York to Amsterdam.

d Sally seems to be selected by the committee.

e I expect this girl to rewrite her essay.

f For Chuck to choose from these chicks will be hard.

Exercise 19

(i) Find examples from languages other than English for reversed orders of

head–complement, specifier–head, specifier–head–complement, head–adjunct, etc.

(ii) Work out possibilities for adjunction the adjunct rule allows. Which

constituent can never occur as an adjunct? Why?

(iii) Attempt to think about constructions that may potentially go against the idea

that all phrases are endocentric (either because they seem exocentric or because they

seem to exhibit properties of more than one head).

(iv) Given the distribution of nominative and accusative forms in English, what

problem is raised by the following examples?

(1) a He being the owner, we were all given a free drink.

b Who wants ice cream? Me.

c Her cheat on him? Never.