Search results for 'tag:Prepositions tag:Determiners' matching tags 'Prepositions' and 'Determiners'

What types of phrase have been underlined?

ericsteef — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:45:46 GMT

I answered this question i just need someone check my answer and tell me if there a mistake and what is the correction of it.

What types of phrase have been underlined? Analyse the phrases and give information about what elements they contain and what sort of words they consist of.

Hercule Poirot made his first appearance in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Participial Phrase called upon by his friend Hastings, to solve a most mysterious murder. This Belgian refugee from the First World War began his career as a police officer - Christie felt it only fitting that he had a professional background as it would explain his knowledge of police proceedings when he later became a private detective. He began his private career on the continent, which is where he formed his lifelong friendship with Hastings.

Poirot would be the first to call himself a great man - he has never been known for his modesty - but with such success in his career he is quite justified in his opinion! He finishes each case with a dramatic dÃ©nouement, satisfying his own ego and confirming to all, that he is truly âthe greatest mind in Europe.â His love of elegance, beauty, and precision, as well as his eccentric mannerisms are often ridiculed by the local bumbling policemen, but it is always Poirot who has the last word!

Christie's inspiration for Poirot lay behind the Belgian refugees who had escaped the war and made their home in the Parish of Torre. Christie had seen how the locals had opened their arms to them and how some, not understanding the British way of life, preferred to do things their own way. Christie decided to make Poirot more mature, a decision she would later regret; âthe result is that my fictional detective is well over a hundred by now.â

But not even Christie could ever have imagined how popular Poirot would become, nor how many stories she would write about him. He would star in thirty-three novels and fifty-four short stories, including some of Christieâs best such as Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Death on the Nile.

Poirot deserves his place in crime fiction history and this was certainly achieved on his death in 1975; Poirot became the only fictional character in history to be honoured with an obituary on the front of The New York Times!

(Adapted from the official Agatha Christie page (http://uk.agathachristie.com)

a professional background:

it is NP âaâ is indefinite article function as determiner.âProfessionalâ is adjective,â

a professionalâ is a premodifier of the noun phrase, âbackground âis the head noun of the noun phrase.

2-Christie's inspiration for Poirot :

it is NP âChristieâsâ is noun of the noun phrase form functions as Premodifier ,â inspirationâ the head noun of the noun phrase âfor Poirotâ i

2-Christie's inspiration for Poirot :

it is NP âChristieâsâ is noun of the noun phrase form functions as Premodifier ,â inspirationâ the head noun of the noun phrase âfor Poirotâ is Prep: P âforâ preposition âPoirotâ noun and all the phrase âfor Poirotâ is the postmodifeir of the noun phrase.

3-More mature:

adjective phrase in its comparative form consists of âmoreâ determiner function as premodifier of the adjective phrase and âmatureâ adjective is the head of the adjective phrase.

Could have imagined:

verb phrase consists of, âcouldâ modal auxiliary verb, âhaveâ grammatical auxiliary, imagined stative verb in past participle form and all the phrase in the present perfective tense.

In thirty-three novels:

prepositional phrase consists of preposition âinâ,â thirty three" Post determinerâ âNovelsâ is the head noun of the noun phrase.

Sentence Analysis

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:49:24 GMT

I have to analyse the following sentence, but I'm really stuck...

"Amanda's practical solutions of what had seemed an insoluble mystery descended on the family like a balm."

I have to cut this sentence into constituents and cut those up in nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions etc.
For now I have this:
'Amanda's practical solutions of what had seemed an insoluble mystery' = the subject of the whole sentence and is a Noun Phrase
'descended' = the main verb of the sentence,
'on the family' = a Prepositional Phrase
'like a balm' = a Prepositional Phrase

The two prepositional phrases don't give me any trouble (both start with a preposition, than have a determiner article and end in a noun).

The Noun Phrase is what gives me trouble...

'Amanda's practical solutions of what had seemed an insoluble mystery' has two constituents, I'd say...
'Amanda's practical solutions' = Noun Phrase
'of what had seemed an insoluble mystery' = ???
I really can't get beyond this point... How should I analyse this?

I really hope someone can help me with this sentence...

word classes

veryconfused — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:09:08 GMT

Can anyone help with what word classes the underlined words belong to (conjunction, preposition, determiner, etc)?

When she was 16-years-old, she ran away from home and moved to London, then New York to work as a nurse. During her time in New York, she kept in contact with her sister. She said âI donât know what Iâll do about it, but I donât see why we should just waitâ¦ And I always had that picture in my mind, all through this time.â

German inventor John Smith...

She travelled far, crossing several army checkpoints, until she was expelled from the country.

Thanks!

Re: Parts of speech

Yankee — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:33:47 GMT

You could try color-coding your answers this way, for example:

(1) the verbs; (2) the nouns; (3) the adjectives; (4) the adverbs; (5) the prepositions; and (6) the conjunctions

The usage of the word 'the' in your sentences would normally be referred to as definite article or determiner.

Re: sentence to a 3 year's imprisonment

CalifJim — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:04:18 GMT

I don't know why probation works while meeting does not

In my opinion, it's the nature of the noun, not the preposition.

He is on a 3 months' probation. (probation: countable; a is OK.)
He is at a 10 minutes' meeting. (meeting: countable; a is OK.)
He is on 3 months' probation. (probation: uncountable; no determiner is OK.)
He is at 10 minutes' meeting. (meeting: uncountable????!!!!)

probation can be used as a C or NC noun. meeting can only be a C noun (except in the jocular -- and I don't know if you've heard this one, but I have -- The new boss gives good meeting.)

If there's an alternative explanation, I'm sure somebody will let us know!

CJ

Re: a to-infinitive

CalifJim — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:11:29 GMT

Yes, but I'm still not sure what you mean by 'grammatical names'. I don't think there is any particular name to the parts that you have underlined. The first two are infinitive structures (with full infinitives). The third is also an infinitive structure, but with a bare infinitive instead of a full infinitive. But I don't think "infinitive structure" is necessarily the 'grammatical name' you are looking for.

to look = infinitive; verb form
for = preposition
the = determiner
key = noun
to clean = infinitive; verb form
room = noun
pour = verb
water = noun
down = preposition
sink = noun

CJ

Re: I need clarification on this

Buddhaheart — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 02:06:47 GMT

1. We really appreciate your giving us your opinion regarding this issue. OK

2. We really appreciate you giving us your opinion regarding this issue. Not OK

What comes after the main verb âappreciateâ is a noun phrase âyour giving â¦â. âGivingâ is a gerund acting as a noun. What precedes a noun must be a determiner and in this case âyourâ. âYouâ is a pronoun and therefore is incorrect.

You could turn these sentences into a complex one thus âWe really appreciate the fact that you considered our opinion regarding this issue.â

3. We are looking forward to your giving us your feedback. OK

âToâ here functions as a preposition and NOT as a marker of infinitive. Therefore âyour giving â¦â is noun phrase and the above reasoning also governs.

4. If it wasn't for my healing, he'd still be half dead. OK

Type II Conditional expressing unreal condition. He wasnât half dead because of me.

5. It was my talking that convinced him into believing us.

âConvincedâ means âcaused to believeâ. Consider revising the sentence thus: âIt was my sweet talking that convinced him.â or âI persuaded him to believe in us.â & etc.

6. It was my healing them that made them (to) win *won the fight.

The verb after âmadeâ is an infinitive without the marker âtoâ. A simple infinitive canât be in the past tense. For example, make me (to) cry (*cried); make me go (*went) away & so on

Re: what could come after a preposition?

CalifJim — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:27:38 GMT

The only thing that can come after a preposition to form a prepositional phrase is a noun phrase, usually a noun accompanied by its preceding determiner and perhaps an adjective. A relative clause may be added. The noun itself may be a gerund.

If the element after the candidate for a preposition looks like it's not a noun, then either of these holds:

a. The preposition candidate is not a preposition, but perhaps an adverb or conjunction.
b. The structure after the preposition candidate actually is a noun phrase.

Both of your examples are in the category labeled b.

In your first example bad should be viewed as an adjective used as a noun, 'promoted' to a noun because of the elision of situation or its equivalent, one.

The situation can be seen as a bad situation.
The situation can be seen as a bad one.

In your second example, bad and good are simply abstract uncountable nouns meaning that which is bad and that which is good, respectively.

CJ

Part of Speech identification

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:16:08 GMT

Hello, this is my first post here, I like to know these words
kilometer
centimeter

Are those words noun if they are standing alone ? if it's, what kind of noun it's, proper noun or abstract noun or etc ?

After that, I want to indentify the part of speech of the following setence by using the stanfard parser at http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/index.jsp
if you input,
convert kilometer to centimeter
it gives convert/VB kilometer/NN to/TO centimeter/VB

if you input,
convert 2 kilometers to centimeter
it gives convert/VB 2/CD kilometers/NNS to/TO centimeter/NN

You can refer to the tagset below, my question is, is the first input setence correct ? if it's correct the part of speech given by the program seems to be incorrect because
the centimeter should be noun instead of Verb, or am I wrong ? If you add the "2" as the second input the program gives the correct part of speech tagging,
it it because my first input grammar is incorrect ? Thank you.

Reference

1. CC  Coordinating conjunction  25.TO  to 
2. CD  Cardinal number           26.UH  Interjection 
3. DT  Determiner                27.VB  Verb, base form 
4. EX  Existential there   28.VBD Verb, past tense 
5. FW  Foreign word              29.VBG Verb, gerund/present participle 
6. IN  Preposition/subord.   30.VBN Verb, past participle 
218z     conjunction 
7. JJ  Adjective                 31.VBP Verb, non-3rd ps. sing. present 
8. JJR Adjective, comparative    32.VBZ Verb, 3rd ps. sing. present 
9. JJS Adjective, superlative    33.WDT wh-determiner 
10.LS  List item marker          34.WP  wh-pronoun 
11.MD  Modal                     35.WP  Possessive wh-pronoun 
12.NN  Noun, singular or mass    36.WRB wh-adverb 
13.NNS Noun, plural              37. #  Pound sign 
14.NNP Proper noun, singular     38. $  Dollar sign 
15.NNPS Proper noun, plural      39. .  Sentence-final punctuation 
16.PDT Predeterminer             40. ,  Comma 
17.POS Possessive ending         41. :  Colon, semi-colon 
18.PRP Personal pronoun          42. (  Left bracket character 
19.PP  Possessive pronoun        43. )  Right bracket character 
20.RB  Adverb                    44. "  Straight double quote 
21.RBR Adverb, comparative       45. `  Left open single quote 
22.RBS Adverb, superlative       46. "  Left open double quote 
23.RP  Particle                  47. '  Right close single quote 
24.SYM Symbol  48. "  Right close double quote

Re: In the following sentence ''He'' is subject, ''is'' is a...

CalifJim — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:22:28 GMT

Categories or Parts of Speech

he - pronoun
he - noun phrase (NP)*
is - verb
a - article
nice - adjective
person - noun
a nice person - noun phrase (NP)*
is a nice person - verb phrase (VP)*

*These designations come from a system of analysis called 'transformational grammar'.

Functions

he - subject
is - copula
a - determiner
nice - modifier
person - complement
a nice person - complement
is a nice person - predicate

At the highest level of functional analysis, each sentence has simply a subject and a predicate; the predicate is everything in the sentence except the subject.

The same part of speech (category), particularly nouns, can be used with different functions. For example a noun can act as a subject, a subject complement, a direct object, an indirect object, an object complement, the object of a preposition, or a modifier. In grammatical analysis the different kinds of terminology shown above are often mixed. The same component in a sentence may have several different names. Also, the same term may be used both as a category and as a function. The word verb, for example, is often used both to mean a part of speech and as the name of its function in the sentence. There are often many different terms that apply to the same word or group of words. The terms selected depend on the type of analysis which is being done.

CJ