Exercises

1. Underline eight adjectives in the following passage.

Decrepit Victorian mansions loomed out of the snowfall on the town’s sporadic hills. Beyond them, cedars wove a steep mat of still green …
The wind drove snowflakes steadily inland, hurling them against the fragrant trees, and the snow began to settle on the highest branches with a gentle implacability.

Underline seven verbs in the following passage.

By two o’clock on the first afternoon of the trial, snow covered all the island roads. A car pirouetted silently while skating on its tires, emerged from this on a transverse angle, and slid to a stop with one headlight thrust into the door of Petersen’s Grocery, which somebody opened at just the right moment – miraculously – so that no damage befell car or store.

2. We have seen that we can recognize a single class of verbs in English. In the neutral declarative construction, all verbs can occur to the right of a subject noun phrase (and, with a minute number of exceptions, verbs can be preceded by the infinitive marker to or be marked for tense, on the pattern of either play–played or write–wrote). Closer scrutiny reveals sub-classes of verb. What constructions do the following verbs occur in? Think up examples using each verb and see how many different patterns you can devise. For example, if we were considering the verb HANG, we could devise examples such as They hung the pictures on the wall opposite the window or They hung the wall with pictures or These curtains aren’t hanging properly.

MEET SCATTER COLLIDE CRASH

And the following verbs?

MIX BLEND STIR

3. Classes of words consist of prototypical central members, peripheral members and some members that are neither one nor the other. For adjectives, we recognized four criteria exemplified in (5) above: occurring in a noun phrase (as an attributive adjective), occurring as the complement of a copula (as a predicative adjective), occurring with words such as very and occurring in the comparative, either with the suffix -er or with more. Of the adjectives listed below, which are central, prototypical adjectives, which are peripheral adjectives and which are in between?

RICH AWAKE WOODEN MAJOR