Grammar Flashcards

In 'The more you practice, the faster you learn,' what grammatical structure is demonstrated?

Answer: Comparative correlative construction

The 'the more...the faster' pattern is a comparative correlative structure linking two proportional comparisons.

What is 'government' in syntactic terminology?

Answer: A rule requiring a head word to determine the grammatical case or form of a dependent

Government (or 'selection') means a head word — such as a preposition or verb — requires its complement to appear in a specific grammatical form or case.

Which option is an example of an attributive adjective?

Answer: The classified report was filed.

An attributive adjective ('classified') appears directly before the noun it modifies ('report'), unlike a predicative adjective which follows a linking verb.

In the sentence 'She asked whether the test had been scored,' what is the grammatical role of 'whether the test had been scored'?

Answer: Nominal (noun) clause acting as the object of 'asked'

'Whether the test had been scored' is a noun clause functioning as the direct object of the verb 'asked.'

What distinguishes a phrase from a clause in English grammar?

Answer: A clause has a subject and a finite verb; a phrase lacks one or both.

A clause contains a subject and a finite (tensed) verb, while a phrase is a grammatical group lacking that subject-verb combination.

Which sentence contains a split infinitive?

Answer: She decided to boldly attempt the challenge.

A split infinitive places an adverb ('boldly') between 'to' and the base verb ('attempt'), splitting the infinitive form.

What is 'zero derivation' (also called 'conversion') in English morphology?

Answer: Changing a word's grammatical class without adding any affix

Zero derivation (conversion) shifts a word from one grammatical category to another with no change in form, such as using 'email' as both a noun and a verb.