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Well, the second day of lessons passed without incident, but the session did cause me to rethink the grammatical proficiency of college students. We were constructing syntactic trees in class, and in order to do this, one must have a grasp of basic grammar and be able to name the various parts of speech. Before I get to my example, a few terms:
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Prepositions
Conjunctions, coordinating and subordinating
Auxillaries, modal and non-modal(These are helping verbs with fancy dress; only "have" and "be" are non-modal).
Determiners(definite and indefinite articles, comparative words like "more", "both", and "every"; also called degrees.
Pronouns; for the purposes of syntactic diagramming, these are called Nouns.
Now, these parts of speech are then grouped into what are called constituents, or phrases, to form sentences, and then there are specifiers and complements to consider and classifications according to constituent type(Noun, Preposition, Adjective, or Verb) and lexical or functional purposes. But, before you can do any of that, you have to identify each part of speech in a sentence or constituent. Thus:
The dog ate the food. The=determiner, dog=noun, ate=verb, the=determiner, food=noun.
Simple, right? Well, I thought so, but my classmates were stumped with this sentence:
I assume that you can manage the task.
In the above sentence, what role does the word that play?
How about in this one?
That boy can't have sugar because he is diabetic.
Or this:
I don't know whether I can come to the party. What function does whether have in the sentence?
Take a stab at it, and I'll post the correct answers tomorrow, alongside the moronic answers of my classmates.
I'm hoping to have the Nevillefic up by Monday, but that will depend on homework and my success or failure against demon inertia. Tomorrow is bill and sundries shopping day, and I'm hoping to get to the grocery store ahead of the locust swarm of football fans arriving for the Miami game on Monday night. If I don't go by Saturday, the roomie and I will be reduced to gnawing on Beggin' Strips for protein.
I'm also hoping to pick up the new CSI: New York novel, Dead of Winter, and The Ring Two on DVD. The book should be doable since it's eight dollars, but the DVD might have to wait until I've ponied up for my textbook.
Speaking of CSI: New York, Season One comes out on DVD October 18th.~Squee~ Happy Belated Birthday to me. Now if only they would cough up Season Five of CSI and Season One of NCIS.
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Prepositions
Conjunctions, coordinating and subordinating
Auxillaries, modal and non-modal(These are helping verbs with fancy dress; only "have" and "be" are non-modal).
Determiners(definite and indefinite articles, comparative words like "more", "both", and "every"; also called degrees.
Pronouns; for the purposes of syntactic diagramming, these are called Nouns.
Now, these parts of speech are then grouped into what are called constituents, or phrases, to form sentences, and then there are specifiers and complements to consider and classifications according to constituent type(Noun, Preposition, Adjective, or Verb) and lexical or functional purposes. But, before you can do any of that, you have to identify each part of speech in a sentence or constituent. Thus:
The dog ate the food. The=determiner, dog=noun, ate=verb, the=determiner, food=noun.
Simple, right? Well, I thought so, but my classmates were stumped with this sentence:
I assume that you can manage the task.
In the above sentence, what role does the word that play?
How about in this one?
That boy can't have sugar because he is diabetic.
Or this:
I don't know whether I can come to the party. What function does whether have in the sentence?
Take a stab at it, and I'll post the correct answers tomorrow, alongside the moronic answers of my classmates.
I'm hoping to have the Nevillefic up by Monday, but that will depend on homework and my success or failure against demon inertia. Tomorrow is bill and sundries shopping day, and I'm hoping to get to the grocery store ahead of the locust swarm of football fans arriving for the Miami game on Monday night. If I don't go by Saturday, the roomie and I will be reduced to gnawing on Beggin' Strips for protein.
I'm also hoping to pick up the new CSI: New York novel, Dead of Winter, and The Ring Two on DVD. The book should be doable since it's eight dollars, but the DVD might have to wait until I've ponied up for my textbook.
Speaking of CSI: New York, Season One comes out on DVD October 18th.~Squee~ Happy Belated Birthday to me. Now if only they would cough up Season Five of CSI and Season One of NCIS.
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