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IV. PARTS OF SPEECH AND PHRASES

–Adjective and Adverb Phrases
–Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases
–More Complications in Noun Phrases

Despite all the variations and exceptions we have noted here and there, English builds its
sentences out of a relatively small number of phrases. Five of the traditional parts of speech
can serve as the heads for phrases–nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. To
these, the particular linguistic approach we have been following would add the IP (inflection
phrase) and the CP (complementizer phrase). The IP allows us to treat the basic declarative
sentence itself (an independent clause) as a kind of phrase headed by the tense/modal
element. The CP has a variety of uses–the one we have already encountered is its use in
showing the relationship between questions and their parallel declarative sentences. All of
these phrases have the same general pattern when we diagram them. English can get by
with this short list because it builds its more complex structures by placing phrases inside of
phrases. A CP will always contain an IP, which will generally contain at least a subject NP
and a VP in the predicate, and the VP often includes other NPs as complements. The
remaining phrase types, those headed by adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions, are most
often found inside of NP and VP structures. Think of the language as a set of Russian
nesting dolls.

Adjective and Adverb Phrases

Adjective and adverb phrase resemble each other in a number of ways. They are both
usually optional modifying elements within larger phrases, with adjectives modifying nouns
and (adjunct) adverbs usually modifying verbs. They use pretty much the same kind of
specifiers. These similarities are not necessarily helpful, however, as we can easily confuse
one with the other.

Pretty much the only sure way to identify adjectives is to note that they are words
whose most common use is to modify nouns. Adjectives are not the only words that
can describe a noun, but they are words that specialize in doing so. When other
words or phrases modify nouns, we can call them adjectival, meaning that they are
doing work usually done by adjectives.
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The usual position for adjectives in English sentences is in front of the nouns they modify in
a premodifying position:
(1) Happy George slept.
(2) Good students studied.
Linguists call adjectives in this position attributive adjectives, because they give “attributes”
of the noun they modify. A very few adjectives can only appear in the attributive position (like
sheer, utter and only itself).

In some cases, adjectives appear immediately following the nouns they modify, in the
postmodifying position. This is uncommon enough that few people recognize the second
word as an adjective in such traditional titles and phrases as attorney general, court marital,
heir apparent, or vice-president elect. A few adjectives (like proper) seem most comfortable
in the post modifying position. In sentence (3) below–from T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land–the
main motivation is probably the compound character of the modifying adjectives, though
sentence (4) would be a grammatical alternative; the commas help identify short and
infrequent as referring back to sighs.
(3) Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.
(4) Short and infrequent sighs were exhaled.

Poets, of course, can invert normal sentence order with greater freedom than the rest of us.
Beginning poets are discouraged from doing so simply to fix faulty rhythm or provide earlier
rhymes, but good poets can use them as well, as when Shakespeare has Macbeth speak of
the multitudinous seas incarnadine. There are also occasions when normal sentence order
in Standard English requires that adjectives be placed in the post-modifying position. This is
especially true when they are modifying certain indefinite pronouns, as in this sentence.
(5) Someone stupid will buy anything cheap.
A postmodifying position is also preferable when the adjective itself has a post-modifying
phrase:
(6) Men rich in gold are never too old.
(7) Movies better than White Chicks are hard to find.

Most adjectives can also appear in the predicate as subject complements, where they
follow linking verbs like be and are called predicate adjectives.
When discussing linking verbs, we have already noted that most adjectives can serve as
subject complements in sentences like this:
(1) George is brave.
This position for adjective is called predicative, and adjectives which occupy it are called
predicate adjectives, terms one should be able to remember by association with the term
predicate. (Noun phrases in this position are called predicate nominals or predicate
nominatives.) There are a handful of adjectives which mainly appear in the predicative
position and cannot appear in the premodifying attributive position:
(2) George is afraid.
(3) George is awake.
Such adjectives can, however, appear after the nouns they modify in the postmodifying
position, with or without following phrases, and usually set off by commas:
(4) George, afraid of the dark, trembled.
(5) George, awake, waved.
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Adverbs are a more miscellaneous category. Just as we can define adjectives as

single words whose most frequent use is in the adjectival function of modifying
nouns, we can define adverbs as single words whose most frequent use is as
adverbials, but adverbial functions themselves are very diverse. The adjunct
adverbials we have restricted ourselves to so far, however, are primarily found
modifying verbs–as adverbs of time, place (locative), manner, and frequency.
Within the traditional parts of speech, adverbs serve as a catch-all class for any kind of
modifier that isn’t an adjective. Linguists and even very traditional grammarians sometimes
separate the various adverbial functions into different word categories, but we will be
conservative and treat those as subcategories of a single adverb category. The adverbials
we have encountered so far are adjunct adverbials which are usually found within a verb
phrase, where they answer questions like when? where? how? and how often? Even there
we find differences, with adverbialss of time. place, and manner usually found at the end of a
verb phrase, and adverbialss of frequency usually placed at the beginning, where they serve
as the specifier for the verb verb phrase:
(1) Lindsay will go to rehab soon. [TIME]
(2) Lindsay will go to rehab there. [PLACE]
(3) Lindsay goes to rehab reluctantly. [MANNER]
(4) Lindsay often goes to rehab. [FREQUENCY]

We have noted that adjunct adverbials can move to the front of sentences, making it a bit
harder to identify subjects. Adverbs are just single words which regularly serve as
adverbials. As single-word adverbials, adverbs can move there as well, though adverbs of
time and frequency seem more at home as sentence openers. Adverbs of manner are
sufficiently odd in this position that they are often set off with a comma, and other adverbs
can be treated in that way as well:
(5) Soon, Lindsay will go to rehab.
(6) There Lindsay will go to rehab.
(7) Reluctantly, Lindsay goes to rehab.
(8) Often Lindsay goes to rehab.

More than other kinds of adverbials, single-word adverbs can also change position within the
verb phrase, though adverbs of place may sound a bit formal when they precede the verb.
(9) Lindsay will soon go to rehab.
(10) Lindsay will there go to rehab.
(11) Lindsay reluctantly goes to rehab.
(12) Lindsay goes to rehab often.
This ability to move around within the sentence is one test one can use to distinguish
adverbs from adjectives and from other parts of speech as well–an adverb like however, for
example, is often confused with the subordinate conjunction although, but it can move
around in a sentence and must generally be set off with commas or other punctuation.
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EXERCISE 4.01: Identify the highlighted word in these sentences as

an adverb of time, an adverb of place, an adverb of manner, an
adverb of frequency, or an adjective.
1) And here I take my stand.
2) Andy quickly knew something was wrong.
3) The doctor will see you now.
4) A fool and his money are soon parted.
5) His excuse was just laughable.
6) I always knew you were a rotter.
7) Janet covered up the slip smoothly.
8) The picnic was outdoors.
9) Sunny feels blue.
10) We sometimes forget how fragile others can be.

Keeping track of adjunct adverbs and adverbials like these would be easier if it were
not for the odd behavior of time and place adverbials. We have already seen that they
can serve as subject complements, where it is easy to confuse them with adjectives.
As subject complements (predicate adverbials), time and place adverbials are not really
“adjuncts,” since they are necessary parts of the sentence. We can distinguish them from
adjunct adverbials by seeing if the sentence makes sense when we substitute an adjective:
(1) The wedding is soon ==> The wedding is gloomy.
(2) The package is here ==> The package is heavy.

In practice, it should be easy to recognize such structures as subject complements, since

predicate adverbials occur only with be and one or two other verbs often used as linking
verbs (e.g., seem, remain). If we remember that only linking verbs take subject
complements, there should be no confusion. If in doubt, try moving it around. If it can move,
it’s a mere adjunct adverb or adverbial:
(3) Tom dances here.
(4) Tom dances tonight.
(5) Here Tom dances.
(6) Tonight Tom dances.

Notice that time adverbials can occasionally be noun phrases, making one wonder whether
to call them predicate nominatives or predicate adverbials as subject complements:
(7) The meeting was last night.
We’ll try to avoid such instances in quizzes.

Time and place adverbials can also serve as postmodifiers within noun phrases. These are
more apt to be prepositional phrases than single-word adverbs or noun phrases, but these
do occur:
(8) The meeting here went well.
(9) The meeting tonight went well.
(10) The meeting last night went well.
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EXERCISE 4.02 : Predicate Adjectives (and Adjective Phrases),

Predicate Nominatives, Predicate Adverbials. Say what kinds of
subject complement are found in the following sentences:
1) Be my love!
2) Gandolf was here all the time.
3) John is grouchy this morning.
4) Like it or not, Duane is your boss.
5) My hot dog tastes funny.
6) My best years were then.
7) The nights were warm and humid.
8) Sometimes this seems too easy.
9) The fruity part is inside.
10) You are always in my dreams.

In defining adjectives and adverbs we have concentrated on meaning and sentence

function because they share some other defining characteristics. Both adjectives
and adverbs are often (but not always) gradable, in which case they may be inflected
for comparison, though English uses phrases with more and most, less and least, for
most comparatives and superlatives.
Most adjectives and adverbs can be thought of as being along some kind of scale ranging
from greater to less, with a mid-point at which the items compared seem much the same.
Adjectives and adverbs of which this is true are said to be gradable. Many gradable
adjectives and some adverbs have special inflected forms for occasions when we want to
say that Professor Canary is further along the scale of kindliness than some (unnamed)
colleague or that he is further along than any:
(1) Canary is a kind professor.
(2) Canary is a kindlier professor.
(3) Canary is the kindliest professor.

The “-er” ending form is known as the comparative, and the “-est” ending as the
superlative. Notice that the article/determiner in sentence (3) must be the, since the
superlative implies in this case that there can be only one who is kindliest.

The adjective good has a particularly irregular pair of inflections, better for the comparative
and best for the superlative, matched by bad, worse, worst. It does not help that its adverb
equivalent well uses the same comparative and superlative forms.
(4) Kay dances the tango well
(5) Kay dances the tango better.
(6) Kay dances the tango best.
The use of good as an adverb is not uncommon but is still stigmatized as non-Standard:
(7) *Kay dances good.

New adjectives and adverbs–and English is adding them every day–form their comparative
and superlatives with more and most, sometimes called phrasal comparatives and phrasal
superlatives. Many traditional adjectives and adverbs do as well, making inflection for
comparison relatively useless as a way of identifying these parts of speech. The general
rule is that one-syllable words use the inflection, while many two syllable words (except
 90

those ending in -y) and all words with three or more syllables use phrasal comparison:
(8) hot - hotter - hottest
(9) happy - happier - happiest
(10) useful - more useful - most useful
(11) diabolic - more diabolic - most diabolic

If anything, phrasal comparatives seem to be gaining, as part of the general collapse of

English inflections. One advantage is that with phrasal comparisons one can point in the
opposite direction as well.
(12) Claudia speaks Spanish less fluently
(13) She is the least comfortable in Arabic.

Adverbs do not have separate inflections of their own. The -ly ending is regularly used as a
derivational affix to make adverbs (often of manner) out of adjectives, but it is not a true
inflection. It is, in fact, a bit of a trap, since a similar ending was once used to make
adjectives of nouns, leaving the language with a series of adjectives ending in -ly. In the
sentences below, the first highlighted word is an adverb and the second an adjective:
(14) Professor Canary is easily recognized as a kindly old professor.
(15) Some folks think Alice is overly friendly.
(16) I lust frantically after the lovely Beatrice.
One way of remembering these exceptions is to notice that many of them apply to your
beloved professor–kindly, friendly, lovely, silly. [Unfortunately even these exceptions have
exceptions–notice that a suspiciously adverbial kindly can be used in place of please in polite
imperative expressions like sentence (17) below:]
(17) Kindly step this way.

Gradable adjectives and adverbs can also have their relative position along a scale
indicated by the use of special modifiers like very. These are traditionally regarded as
intensifying adverbs, but can be regarded as a separate category, variously called
intensifier, qualifier, or degree word. These can be regarded as the specifiers of an
adjective phrase or adverb phrase. These phrases can also have complements.
When we speak, as we often do, of Professor Canary as a very kindly professor, it is clear
that very is modifying kindly rather than professor. The real premodifier in that phrase, then,
is the adjective phrase very kindly. Just as nouns and verbs head noun phrases and verb
phrases respectively, an adjective is the head of an adjective phrase. Words like very, which
give us a sense of just how kindly Professor Canary is, are the specifiers of the adjective
phrases in which they appear. Traditionally, these words are treated as adverbs, more
specifically intensifying adverbs. That is the term we’ll be using most of the time. Because
very and some other intensifying adverbs are restricted to this use and cannot move around
a sentence like most adverbs, some grammarians prefer to think of them as a separate word
category, variously called intensifiers, qualifiers, or degree words. The advantage of a
term like “degree word” is that such words do not always imply, like very, that we are far
along the scale:
(1) George is rather nice.
(2) He is somewhat handsome.

One reason for thinking of intensifier as some kind of separate category is that it seems the
most appropriate term to use for the what and how of our exclamatory (exclamative)
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sentences:
(3) What a jerk!
(4) How diabolic!
One also occasionally finds the word very used to modify nouns:
(5) You are the very man I was looking for!

One argument against separating intensifying adverbs from other adverbs is that many
words used as manner adverbs can serve this function, sometimes with intensifiers of their
own:
(6) Terribly silly professors sing and dance
(7) That is an incredibly stupid idea.
(8) Things deteriorated awfully rapidly.

EXERCISE 4.03: Say Whether the Highlighted Words are Used as

Adjunct Adverbs or Intensifying Adverbs.
1) Ashley is very sexy.
2) Bert is hardly innocent in this matter.
3) Carol failed her test badly.
4) The father treated his youngest child better.
5) Gilbert is not too bright.
6) I was looking frantically for my key.
7) It is all enormously sad.
8) Marilyn naturally distrusted Tom’s intentions
9) Sometimes Tom seems absolutely clueless.
10) We go boldly where no man has gone before.

Since intensifying adverbs can modify either adjectives or adverbs, they do not help us
distinguish between adjective and adverbs. They can, however, be used to distinguish
between adjectives and other premodifiers in noun phrases, as we’ll see later.

Intensifying adverbs as specifiers are far more common in adjective and adverb phrases
than complements of any sort, but the latter do occur, mostly in adjective phrases. It can be
tricky to recognize them as part of the phrase, though it is usually clear, if we stop and think
about it, that they modify the adjective or adverb head:
(9) Sam is afraid of ostriches.
(10) Glenda is good at spells.

Phrase structure trees for adjective and adverb phrases follow the same pattern as others.
Only when they have both a specifier (intensifying adverb) and a complement does one need
to include the Adj-bar level:
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Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases

The four parts of speech we have discussed so far (verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs)
are sometimes called open classes. Their boundaries are never set because we use new
words as verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs every day. Even when such new words
come with fancy Greek and Latin roots, purists are apt to object to their introduction, but the
introduction of new words and finding new uses for old words are both inevitable symptoms
of language change. In writing formal English, it generally pays to adopt newly-minted
words slowly, but objecting to others using them is a waste of time. The remaining
traditional parts of speech (prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and interjections) are called
closed classes because they change much more slowly over time. Even in these
categories, new words have been added and old words abandoned over the years, so that
the distinction is not a sharp one.

Among the “closed” word categories, prepositions are particularly important because
they resemble our four open classes in being able to serve as the heads of phrases,
usually (but not always) adjectival phrases modifying nouns or adverbial phrases.
Prepositions are considered a “closed” class because new ones are added to the language
very slowly, even though the use of such words has been increasing over the centuries, as
prepositional phrases have replaced inflections. Depending on how one counts, there are
over a hundred words used as prepositions. That is a small number if one compares it with
the number of nouns or verbs in the language, but many prepositions are among the most
frequently used words in the language–of, for example, ranks second only to the, and in
comes in at number five. Prepositions are used to indicate the relationship between nouns
and nouns, as “of” does in sentence (1) below, or between nouns and verbs, as “with” does
in sentence (2):
(1) Martha is the girlfriend of George.
(2) George danced with Martha.
In these sentences of George and with Martha are prepositional phrases headed by the
prepositions of and with. The noun complements which follow them are serving another
nominal sentence function, object of a preposition.

In traditional English grammars, prepositions are treated like transitive verbs, in that they are
said to require a nominal complement. These can be nouns, noun phrases, or other kinds of
nominal expressions:
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(3) Tom was afraid of Beatrice.

(4) Tom was afraid of Beatrice’s parents.
(5) Beatrice was ashamed of Tom’s dancing.

In the sentences above, the prepositional phrases themselves are complements of the
adjective afraid or ashamed, and thus part of a larger adjective phrase. More often they are
found in noun phrases modifying the main noun (an adjectival function) or in verb phrases
serving as adverbials. In such uses they normally have noun phrase complements.
Certainly, a sentence like (6) is not complete:
(6) *Tom was afraid of

Try the effect of eliminating the objects of the preposition but retaining the preposition in the
following sentences:
(7) Alice was insulted by rabbits.
(8) Mabel went to college.
(9) Bells tolled at midnight.
(10) Tom came from Toronto.

All of these prepositions–at, by, from, of, to--require complements, and there are some other
common prepositions which almost always have complements, including till, toward, and
with. Prepositions which are formed by combining other prepositions generally require a
complement for the last preposition–for example, up to, into, out of.

Prepositional phrases can be used for all of the adverbials we have encountered so far,
including time and place adverbials when used as subject complements:
(11) The meeting will be at noon. [TIME, SUBJECT COMPLEMENT]
(12) Tom got up at noon. [TIME, ADJUNCT ADVERBIAL]
(13) Tom is on the couch. [PLACE, SUBJECT COMPLEMENT]
(14) Tom sleeps on the couch. [PLACE, ADJUNCT ADVERBIAL]
(15) A day went by without trouble. [MANNER]
(16) The guns go off at odd intervals. [FREQUENCY]

Some other adverbial uses are expressed almost exclusively through prepositional phrases.
Some languages, for example, have case inflections for instrumental adverbials. In
English, these are generally expressed through prepositional phrases headed by with, though
by and by means of may also be used.
(17) I killed him with a hammer.
(18) They called it murder by means of a blunt instrument.
(19) I got off by claiming self-defense.

Prepositional phrases, including time and place adverbials, can also serve as postmodifiers in
noun phrases, an adjectival use. When diagraming such sentences, remember to derive the
modifying prepositional phrase from the NP (or the N-bar, if there is one). The object of our
phrase structure trees, after all, is to divide a sentence into its parts and show how the parts
are related to each other:
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The general rule in English is that complements follow the head of a phrase, and this
is true for prepositions in most cases. WH-MOVEMENT, however, seems to allow WH-
pronoun complements to move to the front of the clause without taking their
preposition with them.
In WH-questions, you may remember, an underlying declarative sentence has had an
interrogative pronoun moved to the front of the sentence as a question. When the
interrogative pronoun would have been the object of a preposition, the preposition may or
may not move with the pronoun. Expression (1), for example, yields two possible questions:
(1) ?You are complaining about WHAT?
(2) About what are you complaining?
(3) What are you complaining about?
Some purists might prefer sentence (2), which obeys the general rule that English
complements follow their head, and which does not end the sentence with a preposition.
Informal practice among standard speakers in America, however, clearly favors sentence (3).

WH-MOVEMENT also applies in relative clauses, where many of the same WH-pronouns
used to make questions are used as relative pronouns. Here, too, the preposition often gets
left behind, leaving the clause, and sometimes the sentence ending with a preposition:
(4) ?George baked Martha a pecan pie (Martha was very fond of pecan pie)
(5) George baked Martha a pecan pie, of which she was very fond.
(6) George baked Martha a pecan pie, which she was very fond of.
Again, some purists object to sentences like (6). The most famous answer to this is
attributed to Winston Churchill, who responded to some such criticism with “That is the sort of
nonsense up with which I will not put.” P-stranding, as this phenomenon can be called, is
also found in Scandinavian languages.

EXERCISE 4.04: Circle All Prepositions in the Following Sentences.

1) The Apache may attack at dawn.
2) I need an alarm system in my house.
3) I can’t live with or without you.
4) I want the toys of other boys.
5) I’ve been angry and sad about the things you do.
6) In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine, lived a
miner, forty-niner, and his daughter Clementine.
7) The lady in red is dancing with me cheek to cheek.
8) Out of my dreams and into your arms,I long to fly.
9) We met her after the crash but before the recovery.
10) Which have you been sleeping on?
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Although we normally think of prepositions as having noun phrases and other

nominals as their complements, they can take a wider range of complements. It looks
like some prepositions are intransitive and need no complements at all, but we’ll
follow a more traditional path and call such words adverbs. By the same token, when
words also used as prepositions introduce subordinate clauses, we will call them
subordinate conjunctions rather than prepositions with clausal complements.
Some combinations of prepositions–e.g., out of–may best be treated as two-word
prepositions, but at least where both prepositions retain distinct meaning, it may make sense
to diagram such combinations as cases where the first preposition has taken a prepositional
phrase as its complement. The example below shows this kind of nesting of a phrase within
the same kind of phrase. The main preposition phrase, however, is functioning as an adjunct
adverbial and derives directly from the VP.

In addition to noun phrases, prepositional phases, and the various nominal expressions we’ll
discuss later, prepositions can also take an occasional adverb or adjective and, of course,
pronouns as complements, as in these examples:
(1) Things were going well until then.
(2) They went from bad to worse after that.
Prepositions rarely have specifiers, but intensifying adverbs (degree words, etc.) serve the
purpose when they do:
(3) We were very nearly in deep trouble.
(4) As it was, we were almost on time.

Most of the prepositions used to introduce prepositional phrases which function (at least
metaphorically) as adverbials of place do not seem to require complements. Shorn of their
complements, they can be used themselves as place adverbs:
(5) Tom is behind bars.
(6) Tom’s teddy bear was left behind.
(7) Beatrice’s grades are below average.
(8) Look out below!
(9) Ted walked down the street.
(10) Ted fell down.
We could multiply such pairs if we liked. Try for yourself making such pairs using some other
 96

prepositions which can introduce place adverbials, like aboard, above, about, around, beside,
beneath, between, beyond, in, inside, near, off, on, out, outside, over, through, under,
underneath, or within. Some people would characterize down in sentence (10) as an
intransitive preposition, parallel to intransitive verbs. That solution makes a lot of sense,
but we’ll try to follow the more traditional path and consider these as words which can be
either prepositions or adverbs, just as other words can serve as either nouns or verbs. When
trying to decide whether a place adverbial is a preposition or an adverb, eliminate any
intensifying adverbs (degree words) at the beginning of the expression and just count the
number of words left. If you have one, you have an adverb. If not the first word in the
remaining expression is a preposition and the expression is a prepositional phrase.

EXERCISE 4.05: Say Whether the Highlighted Words are Used as

Prepositions or Adverb:
1) The bank is going under.
2) The boogie-man is waiting just outside the door.
3) The grades are in.
4) He keeps his lucky tooth underneath his pillow.
5) The meeting is over.
6) They don’t have an ounce of sense between them.
7) The UFO hovered just above our house.
8) We’ll see you around.
9) Who knows what evil lurks within the human heart?
10) You’re going out tonight.s

A similar problem arises when prepositions have complements which are clauses with
subjects and predicates of their own. In some cases. we will later define such clauses as
nominals, making the result just a long prepositional phrase:
(11) I have no knowledge of whether he will report.

In a sentence like (11), the complementizer whether introduces a clause that could be a
sentence by itself (He will report), warning us that it is not, in fact, a separate sentence.

Things are a bit different, however, when a word which can be a preposition is followed
directly by a clause that could be a sentence in itself. This is particularly apt to happen with
those prepositions which introduce prepositional phrases serving as time adverbials.

Consider the following pairs of sentences:

(12) Tom has been awake since dawn.
(13) Tom has been awake since Beatrice left.
(14) Life after Beatrice was hell.
(15) Life after Beatrice left was hell.
(16) Meetings before breakfast are hell.
(17) Meetings before I’ve eaten breakfast are hell.
(18) Tom waited until the wedding.
(19) Tom waited until he was married.

All of the underlined expressions function within their larger sentence as adjunct adverbials of
time. Traditional grammar is quite firm in treating words like the until in sentence (18) as
prepositions introducing a prepositional phrase and the until in sentence (19) as a
subordinating conjunction (a word like if or although). We’ll delay much of our discussion
 97

of conjunctions till we take up clauses, but we will follow traditional grammar in treating words
like before and after as sometimes being prepositions (as in the even-numbered sentences
above) and sometimes being subordinating conjunctions (as in the odd-numbered
sentences). If what follows makes sense as a sentence, you have a subordinating
conjunction followed by a clause; in that case, you should be able to replace the
subordinating conjunction by when. If what follows is just a nominal, you have a preposition.

EXERCISE 4.06: Say Whether the Highlighted Words are Used as

Prepositions or Subordinating Conjunctions:
1) Before the war, it was easy to be complacent.
2) During the night, howls emit, calling for the sacred lust.
3) Tom was desolate after Beatrice left him.
4) I never heard them singing till there was you.
5) I’d like to see you before you leave.
6) I’ll love you until the end of time.
7) Is there life after death?
8) Since you went away, every night and day, I’ve been
drinking too much wine.
9) This song has been on my mind since last night.
10) We just take life for granted, until the day that we die.

As our vocabulary expands, the idiomatic use of prepositions can be tricky even if we
are native speakers. Particular prepositions are often more or less arbitrarily
associated with particular adjectives, nouns, or verbs. With verbs, the association is
sometimes so close that linguistics speak of plural verbs composed of a verb plus one
or more other particles (prepositions or adverbs).
At least most time and place prepositions carry meanings of their own and are more or less
specialized. Unfortunately, some of the most common prepositions (at, by, to, with) have
very diverse uses, and their use in Standard English is not always predictable. Even of,
which normally specializes in indicating possession, has some seemingly arbitrary uses.
Why, for example, are we afraid of something rather than afraid at or afraid with? As with
this example, the use of prepositions is often linked closely with preceding verbs, nouns, or
adjectives. Arbitrary combinations of this sort, where words are combined to yield meanings
not predictable from their normal uses, are called idioms, and errors in the idiomatic use of
prepositions are fairly common even with native speakers. The effect is rather like that of
using a big word one does not quite understand; it suggests that the writer is trying a little too
hard to impress. Most good dictionaries provide help with these expressions, and it is a good
idea to consult them when using an idiom one is not entirely familiar with. In the long run, of
course, it is worth mastering these combinations for oneself. Questions involving such
combinations do crop up on sentence correction sections of tests like the GMAT. If one is
going to pose as an authority on grammar, it is also useful to learn the word “idiomatic” itself;
when stumped for an answer about various peculiarities of English, telling the questioner that
the phrase in question is “idiomatic” will often make them bow to your superior knowledge
and quit asking.

The ways in which verbs and prepositions combine are particularly tricky, and treating them
simply as idiomatic combinations of verbs with prepositional phrases is not really satisfying.
Many verb and particle combinations function very much like verbs--i.e. two-word or
three-word verbs. In sentence (1) below, the word with certainly looks like the beginning of a
prepositional phrase. On is also normally either an adverb or a preposition, but what is it
doing here?
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(1) Carry on with your work.

The easiest answer is that carry on is a plural verb or multi-word verb, one whose meaning
("continue") is not easily predicted from the meaning of either carry or on. We can then say
that either (a) with is an optional part of this verb, changing the intransitive carry on to the
transitive carry on with, or (b) with is a preposition idiomatically used with carry on.
Unfortunately, this is one of those areas in which linguistic approaches (even traditionalist
ones) diverge from school grammars. In dealing with analytic questions asked from a
traditional school grammar perspective, it might be safer to treat on as either an adverb or
another preposition, and it would certainly be wise to treat with as a preposition, muttering
“it’s idiomatic” when challenged.

If this approach does not appeal to you, you might want to know that some people call all
multi-word verbs phrasal verbs. Others prefer to save that term for those cases in which the
verb-particle combination includes an adverb (or what we might call an intransitive
preposition). Some memorable examples (useful for teaching) are shut up, throw up, and
pick up. The intriguing thing about phrasal verbs of this sort is that those which are transitive
can usually (not always) move the direct object in between the verb and the particle:
(2) Tom threw up his lunch.
(3) Tom threw his lunch up.
With many verbs, this movement is obligatory when the direct object is a pronoun. Sentences
(2) and (3) are both acceptable, but of those below only sentence (5) is Standard English:
(4) *Tom picked up her at the bar.
(5) Tom picked her up at the bar.

Plural verbs which are always transitive are sometimes called prepositional verbs, since
they can always be analyzed as cases where verbs take prepositional phrases headed by
particular prepositions. In many such cases, though, the prepositions are tied much more
closely to the verb than to the following noun phrase. In the following pairs of sentences,
notice how much more idiomatic it feels to leave the preposition behind when we make
questions. Sentences (7) and (8) also illustrate how such idioms can incorporate nouns as
well (e.g., care).
(6) What did the committee look at?
(7) ?At what did the committee look?
(8) What were you taking care of?
(9) ??Of what were you taking care?.

As sentences (8) and (9) show, at is not the only preposition that is used in such expressions,
but it is a particularly frequent one, often used to mark objects of otherwise intransitive verbs:
(10) The dog barks.
(11) The dogs barks at strangers.
(12) The grandmother beamed.
(13) The grandmother beamed at her grandson.
(14) George frowned.
(15) George frowned at Edgar.

Similar verbs include gasp, giggle, glare, glower, grin, groan, growl, grumble, grunt, hoot,
laugh, leer, nod, peer, scowl, shudder, sigh, smile, smirk, stare, and wink. Notice that some
verbs are able to use more than one preposition for the purpose, a point which makes clear
the arbitrary character of such idioms, even though the different prepositions may convey
very slightly different forms of transitivity.
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(16) George pointed at the blackboard.

(17) George pointed to the blackboard.
(18) Beatrice waved at George.
(19) Beatrice waved to George.

Here are some other common verb and preposition combinations you should be familiar with:
(20) I agree with you.
(21) The nurse will attend to him.
(22) His victory was attributed to dumb luck.
(23) The debate centers on his use of money.
(24) The product conforms to government specifications.
(25) We differ from them on this point.
(26) His ideas always result in disaster.
(27) She can always get around her father's rules.
(28) I’m not sure what you are trying to get at.
(29) I’m still trying to get over her.
(30) It’s too early to get up.
There are also verbs with two particles, the second of which is clearly a preposition--like put
up with or face up to or, possibly, carry on with.

EXERCISE 4.07: Parts of Speech Sometimes Confused–Identify the

highlighted words as Adverbs, Subordinating Conjunctions,
Prepositions, or Modal Auxiliary Verbs.
1) The auditors here rejected my expense report.
2) The days since she left have been dreary.
3) The game probably will make or break our season.
4) I looked across the room and there she was.
5) I would gladly give up musical genius just to have you as
my very own personal Venus.
6) An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how intelligent
he would have been not to take it.
7) It just might be your daughter on our bus.
8) Life without love is empty.
9) Our meeting never was the highpoint of my life.
10) The moments before the curtain rises are always tense for
me.

More Complications in Noun Phrases

Our earlier discussion of noun phrases concentrated on determiners and related pronouns.
Unfortunately, adjectives are not the only premodifiers found in noun phrases, nor are
prepositional phrases the only post-modifiers, though it makes sense to call the other entities
which modify the head noun adjectival. As noun phrases grow more complex, subject-verb
agreement confusions can proliferate.

Even the distinction between adjectives and nouns is a little less sharp than one might
think. Nominal adjectives can serve as the head of noun phrases, while noun
modifiers can serve the adjectival role of modifying other nouns. In the latter case,
however, one has the option of treating all such structures as compound nouns,
though we will not do so. Where confusion is possible, we can distinguish nouns
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from adjectives by the adjective ability to be modified by intensifying adverbs and to

form comparisons by the noun ability to form plurals and possessives. Characteristic
endings are another clue, although not a totally reliable one.
The words old and young are clearly adjectives, but in a sentence like (1) below, they head
up noun phrases:
(1) The old watch the young dance.
It might be tempting to say that old and young are words that can be either adjectives or
nouns, but in sentence (1) they are clearly both still adjectives, even though occupying a
nominal position. We can add an intensifying adverb like very, as in sentence (2) or make
them comparative or superlative, as in sentences (3) and (4):
(2) The very old watch the very young dance.
(3) The younger watch the older dance.
(4) The oldest watch the youngest dance.
We couldn’t do all this if old and young had become nouns. A clearer name for such cases
is nominal adjective. Another test which we can use to distinguish such nominal adjectives
from normal head nouns is by inserting the word ones after the suspected adjective:
(5) The old ones watch the young ones dance.
(6) The very old ones watch the very young ones dance.
(7) The older ones watch the younger ones dance.
(8) The youngest ones watch the oldest ones dance.

Nominal adjectives are normally treated as plural for purposes of subject verb agreement, but
the comparative and superlative forms can also be used with singular verbs, though the
result may not be pretty:
(9) ?? The older watches the younger dance.
(10) ?? The oldest watches the youngest dance.

To balance out nominal adjectives, we have adjectival nouns. The easiest to recognize are
possessive nouns in the adjective position. Consider the following sentence:
(11) He wore a red champion’s belt.
The general rule is that possessives are central determiners, coming in front of any
adjectives, and that they cannot occur with other central determiners, like the article a, but
sentence (11) is obviously an exception. The word champion’s occurs in the same noun
phrase as the central determiner a and comes after the modifying adjective red. It is
functioning as a noun modifier, a noun serving the adjectival function of modifying another
noun.

Noun modifiers that are not in the possessive case are even more common:
(12) Alice is an obvious trophy wife.
How do we know that champion’s and trophy are not just adjectives in these sentences? The
possessive ending on champion’s is certainly one good clue. Adjectives do not have a
possessive case form in English. Both champion and trophy can have a possessive case,
though trophy’s would not make sense in sentence (12). Adjectives don’t have plural forms
in English, but both champion and trophy do. Most adjectives, on the other hand, can be
preceded by intensifying adverbs like really, but champion and trophy cannot, so that
sentences (13) and (14) are unacceptable:
(13) *He wore a red really champion’s belt.
(14) *He wore a red really trophy belt.

Noun modifiers characteristically come immediately before the head noun, after any other
modifiers. They can, in fact, be considered as the first part of a compound noun. English
 101

has a great range of such nouns, formed by putting together a noun and another noun–they
can involve other parts of speech combined with nouns, as well, but we’ll put those off for
now. Some noun+noun compounds have been used together for so long that we put no
space between the two nouns and treat them as a single word:
(15) Tom had bedroom eyes.
Other combinations, almost equally common, are usually printed with a space between:
(16) He went into the dining room.
Many combinations seem to vary according to the whim of the writer:
(17) Tom is in the doghouse.
(18) Tom built a dog house.
Hyphens can also be used between the two portions of a compound noun, especially if only
one part is a noun.

Compounding, making new words by shoving together old ones, is one of the most
productive ways of making new words in Germanic languages like English. On the other
hand, stringing together a long series of noun modifiers can make your prose sound ugly,
though it is not uncommon in academic, business and other forms of bureaucratic prose.
Some of the results are certainly felt as single words, but it seems a bit counter-intuitive to
treat long strings like Consumer Product Safety Commission or Facilities Management
Center Director as single compound nouns. We will treat them as strings of noun modifiers
and discourage their use wherever possible. In diagraming noun combinations separated by
spaces, then, we’ll show the two nouns as part of the same head noun, even when they are
printed as separate words:

In distinguishing head nouns from nominal adjectives and noun modifiers from regular
adjectives, we have already noted some of characteristic ways in which we identify parts of
speech–for adjectives, the “very “ test and being made superlative or comparative; for nouns,
the ability to form the plural and the possessive. There are quite a few other word-endings
(affixes) which also help us identify nouns but these are much less reliable than the tests we
have just mentioned. You will probably be able to think of other nouns which have the same
endings as these:
(19) citizenship
(20) government
(21) innovation
(22) rapidity
(23) freedom
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English uses endings like these to take words from one part of speech and put them to work
as another part of speech. Sometimes, of course, it does this without changing the ending at
all, a process which usually annoys people until they get used to it. Until recently, for
example, “effort” was simply a noun, but it is coming into use as a verb–“We are efforting
that”–a usage that still sets some people’s teeth on edge.

When we encounter new words in our reading, we are often able to recognize what kind of
word they are even when we are uncertain of their meaning. That is one of the points of the
famous Lewis Carroll poem, “Jabberwocky,” which begins with this quatrain:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
We read this and assume that “toves” is a plural noun; it comes after a “the” and in front of
“did,” which we recognize as a modal verb, and the “s” at the end looks like a plural ending.
Because it comes between a recognized determiner (“the”) and a probable noun, we guess
that “slithy” is an adjective; the “-y” ending appears on a lot of adjectives, so that “slithy” just
“sounds” like an adjective. Assuming that “did” is a modal, we think of “gyre and gimble” as
verbs explaining what “toves” do in the “wabe,” which we take to be another noun, some kind
of place.

Since pronouns are normally defined as taking the place of nouns, you might think they
would help us identify nouns and distinguish them from adjectives, but in fact, pronouns will
take the place of noun phrases headed by adjectives and other nominals:
(22) The rich believe that they are better than we are, but we don’t believe it.

The general rule, in fact, is that pronouns must take the place of a complete noun phrase or
nominal rather than just part of it. This is one of the ways in which we know that noun
phrases are real features of the language and not just inventions of grammarians.

EXERCISE 4.08: Nouns vs. Adjectives–say whether the highlighted

words in the following sentences are premodifying adjectives,
adjectives heading a noun phrase, predicate adjectives, head nouns,
or noun modifiers.
1) The silly professor ate a chocolate.
2) I feel pretty.
3) Our basketball coach is good-looking.
4) I took the last train from Clarksville.
5) John loves Mary.
6) This is the worst date I’ve ever been on.
7) The poor will always be with you.
8) A university education is a good thing.
9) Tom wants to live the life of the rich.
10) My wise uncle advised me not to do that.
11) Edward is a cad.
12) Mamie is slutty.
13) He has found a sweet girl.
14) His defense secretary is scary.
15) We talked to the student help program supervisor.
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Noun modifiers are by no means the only interlopers who can be found occupying the
slot in noun phrases normally occupied by attributive adjectives. Various modifiers
which normally follow nouns can be found as premodifiers from time to time, and
participles are especially common premodifiers.
A full list of premodifiers which can serve in the adjective position would include place
adverbials like outside, prepositional phrases (often hyphenated), and even clauses:
(1) We had only an outside privy.
(2) He was a by-the-book officer.
(3) It was definitely a quit-while-you’re ahead day.
By far the most common non-adjective premodifiers, however, than are present and past
participles. Present participles, in particular, can be confusing when used as premodifiers,
because they are easily mistaken for gerunds, ing-participles which act like nouns but
remain verbals.

As premodifiers within noun phrases, participles generally follow true adjectives, though this
is not an absolute rule. Since participles are generally not gradable, both the very-test and
the ability to form the comparative can be used to distinguish true adjectives from these
participles. Sentence (4 is grammatical, but sentences (5) and (6) are not:
(4) The watching crowd was still.
(5) *The very watching crowd was still.
(6) *The more watching crowd was still.
On the other hand, participles can be modified by manner adverbials that would not occur as
intensifying adverbs in front of adjectives:
(7) The avidly watching crowd was still.
(8) ?? The avidly blue shirt got dirty.

The comparative test can yield ambiguous results with some past participles, however, and
superlative constructions are perfectly acceptable with past participles:
(9) ?The more watched show was a newscast.
(10) The most watched show was a newscast.

In addition, there are present participles which have been used as adjectives for so long that
they pass all adjective tests and might as well be regarded as adjectives:
(11) The very exciting gortch is here.
(12) I saw an even more frightening sight.

In the end, the best test is how one would interpret the sentence if the “ing”-word concerned
were in a predicative position:
(13) The crowd was watching.
(14) The show was watched.
(15) The gortch was exciting.
(16) The sight was frightening.

In sentences (13) and (14), we interpret the ing-words as participles and main verbs, helping
to create a progressive in sentence (13) and a passive in sentence (14). In sentences (15)
and (16), on the other hand, we interpret the ing-words as adjectives and subject
complements. For one thing, if “exciting” and “frightening” were verbs, they would need to be
transitive–that is, we would expect to find direct objects tell us who was being excited or
frightened.
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EXERCISE 4.09: Identify by Type the Premodifiers in the Following

Noun Phrases:
1) a bad hair day
2) the baseball fields
3) the beloved professor
4) the chorus dancer
5) the commercial's dancer
6) a crime scene
7) the criminal's defense
8) the friendly salesman
9) the hapless substitute
10) the killing fields
11) the lascivious lips of Lenore
12) the leopard lips of Lenore
13) Lenore's lips of lust
14) the longing lips of Lenore
15) a mushroom and black olive pizza
16) my lover
17) a rapidly disappearing resource
18) a simple youth
19) a striking blond
20) the sugar substitute
21) the tango dancer
22) the teacher's substitute
23) the tilled fields
24) the tiny dancer
25) a wasted youth

Participles can also serve as postmodifiers within noun phrases, and generally must
do so if they have complements:
(1) The crowd watching was still.
(2) The crowd, watching in horror, was still.
(3) The show watched most was a newscast.

Since compound adjectives (two adjectives joined by and) and adjectives with complements
can also follow the nouns they modify, the postmodifying position is not an absolute indicator
that the modifier is a participial phrase:
(4) Your professor, kindly and wise, has your best interests at heart
(5) The gortch, exciting as ever, is back in town.

For that matter, single adjectives can also sometimes be found following the adjective they
modify, either in a conventional phrase like that in sentence (6) or when someone is waxing
poetic, as in sentence (7):
(6) The attorney general sued.
(7) I sing the body electric.

At the beginning of the sentence, some prepositional phrases and participial phrases that
would normally come after the head noun in the subject noun phrase can be moved in front
 105

of the subject:
(8) In a bit of a snit, Judy stomped out of the room.
(9) Watching in horror, the crowd was still.
In sentences like (8) and (9), the sentence-opening phrases still modify the simple subject
and are still part of the complete subject. One should distinguish a sentence like (8) from
cases in which adjunct adverbial prepositional phrases have been moved to the front of the
sentence:
(10) At night we can see the stars.
(11) In the park, the night is full of couples coupling.

Sentence-opening participial phrases which do not modify the simple subject are generally
disapproved of as dangling modifiers, and English teachers enjoy collecting examples of
them:
(12) Looking around, the nearest Walgreen’s looked like the best bet.
(13) Dressed in a low-cut gown, Tom couldn’t help ogling Beatrice.
In sentence (12), it seems unlikely the any Walgreen’s store is doing the “looking,” and in
sentence (13), we rather think that it is Beatrice rather than Tom who is dressed in a
revealing gown.

Present participles offer one special source of confusion all their own. They can also
be used as nominals, by themselves or as the verbals in nominal participial phrases..
When used this way, they are known as gerunds, and some traditional grammars are very
insistent on reserving the term "participle" for their adjectival use. For safety's sake, learn to
call uses like the following "gerund":
(1) Jogging is good for you.
(2) He enjoys dancing.
Gerunds of this sort can be modified by adjectives as if they were nouns, as in sentence (3),
but they can also be modified by manner adverbials, as in sentence (4);
(3) Active listening is the key.
(4) Listening closely is the key.

When gerunds come with subjects or complements or modifying adjunct adverbials, we have
a gerund phrase, with the gerund as its head. It can be tricky distinguishing between
sentences in which a present participle modifies a head noun, as in sentence (5), and
sentences in which a gerund is the head and takes a noun as its direct object, as in sentence
(6):
(5) Thanking mothers is the purpose of Mother's Day.
(6) Doting mothers make a teacher's life hard.
When the phrase in question is used as a direct object, it can be the subject of a passive
sentence only when the ing-word is a participial premodifier.

The subject of the verbal gerund is usually left implicit, but it can be expressed. The subject
is traditionally a possessive pronoun or noun phrase, allowing on to think of it as parallel to a
possessive determiner of a normal noun phrase. One increasingly finds the objective case
used, especially when the “subject” is a pronoun, as in sentence (8) below.
(7) Our thanking our mothers is the purpose of Mother's Day.
(8) Us thanking our mothers is the purpose of Mother's Day.
(9) Buffy's killing vampires pleased her doting mother.
(10) Buffy killing vampires pleased her doting mother.
The use of the objective may seem less questionable when the gerund phrase is the object
of a preposition, as in sentence (11) and (12), though it remains safer to use the possessive.
 106

(11) This was a way of us thanking our mothers

(12) Her aunt disapproved of Buffy killing vampires.

EXERCISE 4.10: Using Ing-Participles: say whether the highlighted

word is an adjective, a premodifying participle, a gerund, or a
postmodifying participle.
1) Albert was no good at seducing women.
2) Edward was a willing accomplice.
3) Gene gave the man helping too much to do.
4) Tom drank from the overflowing cup.
5) He answered with surprising frankness.
6) Larry enjoys shocking people.
7) Men just don’t like asking directions.
8) The room is cooled by an oscillating fan.
9) They start by attacking your friends.
10) Where is the smoking gun?

When it comes to diagramming sentences, it does not seem necessary to add another
phrase type to our existing inventory.
We can diagram gerund phrases as VPs or IPs or as noun phrases with a verbal in place of
the head noun. The diagram below takes the last of the options:

The main point such diagrams need to make is that the gerund phrase like that in the
sentence above is serving as the subject/specifier for the sentence. The complete subject of
such a sentence is the full gerund phrase, and there is no simple subject. For purposes of
agreement gerund subjects, like other nominals, are treated as third-person singular, and
any subsequent pronoun references will use it.
 107

EXERCISE 4.11: Circle the Complete Subject of the Following

Sentences:
1) All of us are happy about this.
2) Crossing the street in New York can be pretty dangerous.
3) I have no idea about that.
4) The last dog into the gate sometimes finishes first.
5) A man of the cloth should have higher standards.
6) Men lusting after her rather pleases Glenda.
7) People talking on cell phones in church should be struck
dead.
8) The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
9) Undemocratic governments hate rock and roll.
10) Your many fans in Racine will be overjoyed.

Another term from Latin grammar, gerundive, is sometimes applied to some or all
present participles as premodifiers. Most authorities avoid using gerundive for present
participle premodifiers, since English present participle premodifiers are not really equivalent
to the traditional gerundive found in Latin and some other languages, which implies that
something should or must undergo the action specified. Some Latin gerundives of this sort
have become independent words in English, like agenda, but English generally uses passive
infinitive phrases for this meaning–agenda, for example, would be translated as “to be done.”
English present participle modifiers usually have the noun modified as the subject of
underlying sentences, In sentence (1), the overflowing cup implies that sentence (2) is true.
(1) He passed the overfowing cup
(2) The cup is overflowing.
Underlying passive sentences are expressed with past participle modifiers. In sentence (3),
the frightened cows implies the truth of sentence (4):
(3) Dogs chased down the frightened cows.
(4) The cows have been frightened by someone or something.
There are, however, a handful of present participle premodifiers which are equivalent to
passive infinitives. Sentence (5) implies sentence (6), as opposed to sentence (7) which
implies sentence (8):
(5) I bought some chewing gum.
(6) I bought some gum to be chewed.
(7) Under the seat is some chewed gum.
(8) Under the seat is some gum that has been chewed.
Using gerundive for phrases like chewing gum may not be entirely inappropriate.

Some of our discussion of conjunctions will have to wait until we discuss

relationships between clauses, but we have already touched on some subordinating
conjunctions, and coordinating conjunctions like and that can join two or more units
of the same kind–e.g., two nouns, two noun phrases, or two or more independent
clauses (IPs).
The last of our traditional parts of speech is the conjunction, a set of words used to join
grammatical units of the same kind. Subordinating conjunctions are primarily used to
introduce clauses which are part of a more important clause, as with the adverbial clauses of
time we encountered when discussing prepositions like before and since. Coordinating
conjunctions (also called coordinators) join units of equal importance, and some of them
are used very freely with units smaller than a clause.
 108

The main coordinating conjunctions are and, but, and or, and you should know them. The
only other words which get labelled coordinating conjunctions are for, nor, so, and yet. The
basic coordinators, at least, can be used to join any two things of the same kind, from
individual parts of speech to independent clauses, and all coordinators can link independent
clauses:
(1) George and Homer missed the deer, and it disappeared.
The second and in sentence (1) joins two independent clauses, clauses that could stand by
themselves as sentences, what we’ve been labeling as IPs. Sentences with more than one
independent clause joined by a coordinating conjunction are called compound sentences.
The first use of and in sentence (1) is joining together two nouns so that they serve together
as a subject. This kind of structure is called a compound subject. We can join together full
noun phrases this way as well, as in the compound subject of sentence (2) or the compound
direct object of sentence (3):
(2) The president and his brother missed the deer.
(3) The deer escaped the president and his brother.

For purposes of subject-verb agreement, compound subjects joined by and are almost
always treated as plural. Writers are often tempted to use a singular verb by mistake,
especially when the subjects come complete with modifiers that can make us lose track of
where we are. Sentence (4) is wrong; sentence (5) corrects it:
(4) *His knowledge of the subject and his ability to express that knowledge
has improved in this course.
(5) His knowledge of the subject and his ability to express that knowledge
have improved in this course.

An exception to this rule occurs when the two singular nouns joined by and are preceded by
each or every. In such cases, always use a singular verb:
(6) Every man and woman has certain rights.
(7) Each man and each woman has certain rights.

When coordinating conjunctions other than and are used in a compound sentence, the verb
agrees in number with the noun phrase closest to it:
(8) Neither she nor her friends have any manners to speak of.
(9) Neither the girls nor Tom has any clue.

EXERCISE 4.12: Circle the Complete Subject of the Following

Sentences:
1) Anyone and everyone came to that party.
2) Edgar began as a cardboard figure and worked his way up.
3) A fool and his money are soon parted.
4) His giving money to the college helped get his son admitted
there.
5) A man with a permanent smile is probably a clown.
6) My aunt in Missouri asked me for a loan.
7) Ronald and his friend are in the park.
8) Walking to school would do you good.
9) The wise and kindly professor flunked me for my own good.
10) Why have the men and women of Indiana fallen asleep?
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Beginning a sentence with and, but, or or is acceptable in Standard English if what follows
otherwise meets the standards for an independent clause, though it has been condemned so
often in school handbooks that many people think of it as an error. Since this group includes
many instructors, even in English, it can be safest to avoid such structures in college writing.
The usual rule for punctuating coordinating conjunctions is that we use a comma in front of
the conjunction when they are joining independent clauses but not when they are joining
smaller units. It is never wrong and always safe to use a comma when joining clauses,
especially when using less common coordinating conjunctions like for, so, and yet. If the
clauses being joined are fairly short, the comma is not needed for clarity and can be omitted
unless one is writing for a purist.

Even when the phrases being joined are very long, we should generally not use a comma in
front of the conjunction when two items joined together are not independent clauses. A
sentence with a compound predicate like (10) below does not need a comma in front of it, but
one is perfectly appropriate in a compound sentence like (11). Breaking up a compound
subject with a comma, as in sentence (12) is a serious error:
(10) The vice president missed the deer he was aiming at and hit his friend in
the calf.
(11) Homer missed the deer, and the vice president shot Homer.
(12) *The president of the company, and his brother were shooting deer.

Practice varies and confusion reigns on punctuating items in a series. The general rule in
American usage is that commas separate all items in a series, including the last, even if
preceded by and:
(13) He lost his money, his honor, and his wife.

British usage often omits a comma before and in such cases. The omission is standard in
American newspaper usage. In neither country is a comma used where the and is
represented by the ampersand (“&”). Although a comma sometimes makes things a bit
clearer, the existence of alternative practices makes it seem pointless to insist too
strenuously on their use. When the items in a series have internal commas themselves, it is
customary to use semi-colons to separate the series. The object, again, is to make it clear to
the reader what is and is not included in the series.

In diagraming compound structures of various sorts, our main object is to make it clear what
parts of the sentence are being joined by the coordinating conjunction. In doing so, it helps if
the two parts are shown at the same level. Here is a sample of one way to do that:
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Checklist

In this section, we have talked mainly about declarative sentences. Can you still
distinguish them from imperative, interrogative, and exclamative (exclamatory) sentences?
Can you convert between declarative sentences and their equivalent interrogative forms?
We have now covered the five phrase types headed by parts of speech–noun
phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, and prepositional phrases. Can you identify
the heads, characteristic specifiers, and characteristic complements of these five
phrases? Can you diagram them using phrase structure trees?
These phrases serve various functions in sentences, of which we have identified five:
subject, direct object, subject complement, adjunct adverbial, and vocatives. Our noun
phrases keep growing more complicated–can you still show that you recognize the phrases
as structures by identifying the complete subject of a sentence? Can you recognize
subject complements and say whether they are predicate adjectives, predicate
adverbials, or predicate nominatives?
There are four open classes of words–nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
Can you identify them in a sentence and defend your identifications by reference to
meaning, sentence function, and possible inflections? Can you identify the parts of a
verb? Can you say whether the verb of a sentence is transitive, intransiitive, or linking? Can
you identify modal auxiliary and primary auxiliary verbs? Can you distinguish between
common nouns and proper nouns, mass nouns and count nouns? Can you identify the
comparison forms of adjectives and adverbs? Can you tell when a word is acting as a
preposition as opposed to an adverb or subordinating conjunction? Can you tell
whether a participle in a noun phrase is acting as a modifier or a gerund?
Can you recognize articles, demonstratives, personal pronouns, indefinite pronouns,
cardinal and ordinal numbers, quantifiers and multipliers–both as determiners and as stand-
alone pronouns? Can you recognize intensifying adverbs and distinguish them from
adjectives and adjunct adverbials?

W HEN IN DOUBT , MEMORIZE : of, at, and with are always prepositions–if and although are
always subordinating conjunctions.