Department of English
Stockholm University

Syntax exercises for A-level English, spring 2004

From this page you can continue to a set of syntax exercises which I developed while I worked at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. The exercises have since been modified to correspond to the description of English phrase and clause structure found in the Basic Language Analysis (BLA) compendium.

The clause analysis exercises come in six different categories:

Category A contains only simple sentences, i.e. declarative main clauses with no subordinate clauses. (160 sentences)
Category B adds verb groups (cf. BLA p. 41) as predicators; thus, the whole sequence may have been running should be treated as one P. (122 sentences)
Category C adds finite subordinate clauses. (70 sentences)
Category D adds non-finite subordinate clauses. (50 sentences)
Category E adds other clause elements (anticipatory subject (aS) (the it of extraposition constructions and the there of existential there constructions), free predicative (fP), non-finite complement (nfc), oblique object (oO), interjection (Int), vocative (Voc)). (41 sentences)
Category F adds other types of main clause (interrogative, imperative, exclamatory). (123 sentences)

The clause type and function exercises come in two different groups:

Group I contains sentences with only one subordinate clause each. (120 sentences)
Group II contains sentences with more than one subordinate clause; in addition, examples with clefting and extraposition have been added. (55 sentences)

Make sure you read the Instructions before you start the exercises!

And a technical note... In the past, there could be problems with these exercises depending on which web browser you used. The exercises were reprogrammed in the summer of 2002 and should work with any major browser. Note, however, that Internet Explorer loads the pages considerably faster than Netscape Navigator v. 4.7 (I haven’t yet tried them with Netscape v. 6). Since there are over 700 exercises here, you may wish to speed up the loading.

Should you still experience technical problems, please report them to me at the address given below.

Click this button to go on to the Instructions:

21 January 2004
Nils-Lennart Johannesson
contact address: Nils-Lennart.Johannesson@English.su.se

Department of English Stockholm University

Syntax exercises for A-level English, spring 2004

Most recent update: 21 January 2004

Department of English
Stockholm University