5.5 Self-Test on Syntax
Read the extracts below and answer the questions that follow.
Extract 1
After the circus finished, Mum saw her good friend, Maya, who has red hair like me and works at the environmental farm by the Merri Creek. I still hadn’t seen Kite. I didn’t care. Yes, I did. I was wishing I had seen him and was trying hard not to care and to think instead about what a good circus it was but I was getting all mixed-up in my mind, and fidgety.
1. Although the passage is in conversational style and the young girl is rambling on, the syntax is normal syntax, namely, subject, verb, object (circumstances)
(a) True
(b) False
2. In the sentence: “Yes, I did”, the writer is using a referral method in which one
word replaces the complete verb group.
(a) True
(b) False
(c) Other
Extract 2
The sun had died away behind the black trees and the moon was rising. Mabel, her preposterous length covered with coats, waistcoats, and trousers laid along it, slept peacefully in the chill of the evening. Inside the dinosaurus Kathleen, alive in her marble, slept too. She had heard Gerald’s words – had seen the lighted matches. She was Kathleen just the same as ever, only she was Kathleen in a case of marble that would not let her move. It would not have let her cry. Inside, the marble was not cold or hard. It seemed, somehow, to be softly lined with warmth and pleasantness and safety. Her back did not ache with stooping. Her limbs were not stiff with the hours that they had stayed moveless. Everything was well – better than well.
3. Why has Nesbit separated the noun, ‘Mabel’ from the rest of the clause
namely, ‘slept peacefully in the chill of the evening’ and placed it at the
head of the sentence alone?
(a) To show she was still Mabel and alive?
(b) To highlight her separate position physically on the ground
4. Nesbit decides to begin the sentence about Kathleen with an adverbial
phrase: ‘inside the dinosaurus’. What is the effect?
(a) It emphases that Kathleen is in a different place from Mabel
(b) It shows that it was a strange situation
Extract 3
At first the marsh lay clear all round them: long tongues of water reflecting back the sky, and the spires of the little marsh churches poking up from among the huddled roofs of villages here and there, and the marsh sheep grazing beside the sandy track, all very peaceful and friendly.
5. Sutcliff has deliberately suppressed the words: ‘there were’ as she introduces ‘long tongues of water’, ‘spires of the little marsh churches’ and ‘marsh sheep’ and ‘which were’ to indicate their locations. Is this so because she wishes:
(a) to bring immediacy, flow and precision to the description?
(b) to eliminate them only because they are not needed?
Extract 4
The silence was broken. From the crowd came a concerted gasp, then a rumbling bellow of applause, deep and rolling like thunder. Arms waved wildly in the air, men and women shrieked, instinctively relieved after the tense strain of watching and holding their breath.
6. The construction of the second sentence of this extract:
(a) follows the usual pattern of syntax
(b) allows for its subject to be highlighted
(c) stresses the direction from which the gasp came
Extract 5
It was that time when the day begins to turn into night. When the sky gets deep and glowing with the last bit of light. When the night plonks little sooty clouds in the sky. When there are smudges of yellow light coming out from windows, peeking under curtains and doors. When there are cars murmuring home and people turning in their gates getting off the street and people are cooking spaghetti or chops, or leaving offices, and televisions are purring away in living rooms telling the news in a tidy way.
7. This extract is made up of:
(a) a number of sentences
(b) a single sentence and several fragments
(c) just fragments
8. What has the writer in this extract achieved with the use of fragmentation?
(a) a disconnected piece of prose
(b) a set of pictures
(c) a reflective, poetic moment