Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I. Decide whether the verbs in the sentences below are unergatives or unaccusatives:
1. The car had vanished from sight. 2. No other creature can fly as fast, or for as long as birds. 3. My
hopes collapsed. 4. They work very hard. 5. The soldier’s face reddened with anger. 6. The bells were
clanging. 7. Dogs bark. 8. The child burped after eating. 9. A cluster of stars glowed above us. 10.
When I saw them they were dancing with joy. 11. All the water has evaporated. 12. He was
suffocating with indignation. 13. When I last met him, he was meditating on a difficult question. 14.
The lake has already dried up. 15. A dim glow of light emanated from the room.
III. Account for the grammaticality / ungrammaticality of the there-insertion in the sentences
below:
1. There has never been such an opposition. 2. There remains nothing to be done. 3. *Karen appeared
a striking appearance at the party. 4. ??There darted a little boy in the room. 5. There thawed the snow
in the early spring. 6. *There banged a man at the door. 7. There floated logs down the river. 8.
*There is John in the garden. 9. There was the air of a soldier about him. 10. There is that type of
student in the class. 11. There was a person of that sort the party. 12. There is her past to consider. 13.
*There was a basketball player tall in those days. 14. *There is a kind of dinosaur widespread. l5. Q:
What’s on the table? A: There, is the plate, the fork and the knife. 16. There was Ann. 17. There
weren’t the sailors to man the ship. 18. There were tires in short supply. 19. There appeared only
Mary at the party. 20. There strutted a man into the room.
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22. His record weighed against him with the jury. 23. The landmarks serve as signposts for an
invisible mesh of trackways. 24. He emerged as a leader at the age of 40. 25. He looks at your as
another son.
X. Which of the sentences below containing instances of locative inversion are grammatical
and which are ungrammatical?
l. On the line are drying a lot of towels. 2. In a little white house lived two rabbits.3.To their left,
beyond a strip of glass, was die front of a large high building in grey stone. 4. Above then pranced the
horses on the frieze.5. On her finger sparkled a magnificent diamond.
1. A gang of thieves broke into the house last night. 2. He glanced through the article quickly. 3. We
will go very carefully into these proposals. 4. We ran through the main points. 5. They had done away
with that piece of legislation. 6. They are looking forward to their voyage.7. The speaker did not put
up with the interruptions so cheerfully. 8. They agreed with him on the matter. 9. You should not look
down on such people. 10. They discussed the matter and put forth their proposals.