自考英语语法问答题总结

自考《现代英语语法》总结

Chapter One

1.What are the four major types of sentence and what discourse functions are they normally

associated with?

Statements are normally associated with declaratives and primarily concerned with giving information. Questions are associated with interrogatives and primarily concerned with requiring information. Commands are associated with imperatives and primarily concerned with requiring actions. Exclamations are associated with exclamatives and primarily concerned with expressing the speaker’s impression of something.

2.What are the verbs which transferred negation often occurs with? What is their shared

semantic feature?

The verbs which transferred negation often occurs with are: think, believe, suppose imagine and expect. They are the verbs that express “opinion”.

3.Explain the differences between a tag question with a final rising tone and one with a final

falling tone.

With a rising tone, the question expresses the speaker’s neutral expectation of the hearer’s response and invites the hearer to verify the truth of the proposition in the statement. With a falling one, the speaker asks for the hearer’s confirmation of the statement. It can be regarded as similar to an exclamation.

Chapter 4

4.Can the definite article be used for generic reference and the indefinite article for specific

reference? If they can, give one example for each use.

The definite article can be used for generic reference. For example, the panda is a rare animal.

The panda here still denotes the whole species. The indefinite artic le can also be used for specific reference. For example, a dog chained at me when I was on my way home last night.

Here a dog points to a particular, actual example of the class. Here “a”shows indefinite specific reference.

5.What are some of the constraints that the double genitive is subject to?

The second noun in the double genitive almost always refers to persons, never to objects, and the first noun usually has indefinite reference (typically premodified by the indefinite article and the second noun is always definite.)

Chapter 5

6.Why do most contemporary English grammarians adopt a two-tense system?

Because tense is a verb form. Morphologically only present tense and past tense have their forms of verbs. A language which has no verb forms has no tense.

7.If tense is related to time, what is aspect related to?

When ten points to the temporal location of an event or a state of affairs, aspect “reflects the way in which the verb action is regarded or experienced with respect to time.”

8.Why is the past tense often used for politeness?

Because the past tense can make a question or a statement or a suggestion less direct. It is more polite to use the past tense on the part of the speaker.