Help!
Teaching senior high school students and they have been asking me a few questions from their school tests. Here are a couple of examples:
Suddenly, he heard all of the young people screaming with joy, for out there _________ an oak tree covered with hundreds of yellow handkerchiefs.
A to stand B stood C standing D had stood
A ________ ________ over the classroom ________ as the teacher walked in.
No multiple choice. Required answer from Chinese translation = A hush fell over the classroom just as the teacher walked in.
Obviously I know the correct answers, but “Why isn’t it A/B/C/D teacher?”
Is there a good reference grammar book for this kinda thing?
Question 1
All the other verbs in the sentence are in past tense. It seems to be a story and therefore past tense is appropriate. For the sake of text cohesion and grammatical accuracy, sticking to past tense should be preferred. There is elipsis in the sentence so it could be confusing for students.
Question 2 Difficult to say without the Chinese translation but I am assuming it is related to words they have learnt and are now being tested on.
You have “there” as a subject here. englishgrammar.org/introductory-subject/ Scroll down a bit to “Introductory there can also be used with some intransitive verbs.” A and C aren’t possible directly after a subject. D is wrong because past perfect is inappropriate here; the events in the two clauses are simultaneous.
I usually do a little introductory speech at the start of the semester, where I explain that the English they learn in school is for the purposes of passing a test that is graded by computer. And as the computer is a 1970’s vintage card reader, it’s pretty limited in what it can do so the test is also very limited. Therefore, sorry kids, but the English you have to learn in school is not really relevant to the language that I speak and teach.
So, please don’t bring me this stuff. Aside from anything else, most of the examples are unnatural English and I don’t want to spend my class time casting doubts on the capabilities of the regular staff.
Out of context of the story it perhaps was part of, it does sound funny. It’s well constructed though and a lot better than some of the other test “sentences” we’ve seen here recently.
You have “there” as a subject here. englishgrammar.org/introductory-subject/ Scroll down a bit to “Introductory there can also be used with some intransitive verbs.” A and C aren’t possible directly after a subject. D is wrong because past perfect is inappropriate here; the events in the two clauses are simultaneous.[/quote]
Out of context of the story it perhaps was part of, it does sound funny. It’s well constructed though and a lot better than some of the other test “sentences” we’ve seen here recently.[/quote]
For sure, but unfortunately it’s sentences like this that prompt students to write this way when it’s inappropriate to do so.
They may come to think that, for instance, using “for” to mean “because” is common outside poetic or literary contexts, and end up using it in, say, technical writing.
You have “there” as a subject here. englishgrammar.org/introductory-subject/ Scroll down a bit to “Introductory there can also be used with some intransitive verbs.” A and C aren’t possible directly after a subject. D is wrong because past perfect is inappropriate here; the events in the two clauses are simultaneous.[/quote]
Your answer is spot on except that I don’t agree that “there” is a subject. Oak tree is the subject (imo) and there is part of an adverbial expression of place, which means there is inversion. Only possible with intransitive verbs like you pointed out. It does mean that A and C could be possible in another context, but might be unnatural.
The main reason the answer has to be stood is due to the other verbs being past tense, and the sentence would lack coherence and/or cohesion if the verb form changes.
My only hassle is this. I know this and although we can argue or discuss the reasons for the answer, there is no way that a high school student should be worried about this if they are unable to operate on a basic conversational level. “Is there garlic in the sauce?” confuses every single waiter I have ever seen in Taiwan and it isn’t that a difficult structure nor are there words that should be unfamilair to someone working in the food industry.
[quote=“heimuoshu”]
Your answer is spot on except that I don’t agree that “there” is a subject. [/quote]
It’s an introducing or dummy subject. It doesn’t have the semantic function of a subject, but many ordinary rules of grammar still apply to it.
A and C aren’t possible in any tense. I could think of many complex sentences that could include past tense in one clause and past perfect in the other.
However, that’s not meant to be a criticism of you guys for answering alecinwonderland’s questions (they do need to pass, and they do have these tests), and it’s understandable if alecinwonderland feels it best to continue to answer these kinds of questions from students (or teachers, or supervisors).
[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“heimuoshu”]
Your answer is spot on except that I don’t agree that “there” is a subject. [/quote]
It’s an introducing or dummy subject. It doesn’t have the semantic function of a subject, but many ordinary rules of grammar still apply to it.[/quote]
In “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge writes (sorry if I’ve garbled the quote),
But then he writes,
Because of the here that follows the there, I think that there is meant as an adverb.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“heimuoshu”]
Your answer is spot on except that I don’t agree that “there” is a subject. [/quote]
It’s an introducing or dummy subject. It doesn’t have the semantic function of a subject, but many ordinary rules of grammar still apply to it.
A and C aren’t possible in any tense. I could think of many complex sentences that could include past tense in one clause and past perfect in the other.[/quote]
I did say we can disagree on the reason of whether there is a subject or not. I am not disagreeing with your answer and with inversion you can often refer to something as a dummy subject. So I agree with you.
As for A anc C if the sentence or the context changes, you could have this.
For out there to stand up straight, one would need to hold onto a very solid pole because the wind is storming in form the ocean.
For out there standing in the pouring rain, was the love of my life.
Different context and/or structure.
Agreed that we could have past and past perfect in complex sentences, but the grammatical cohesion in the sentence asks for past simple.
I guess there are different kinds of nomenclature for these things. A long time ago, I was taught that there is sometimes an expletive. I think I was, in one English class or another, even given expletive as a part of speech. It struck me as strange, because the word expletive had by then come to mean “dirty word” (because of its use during the Watergate scandal).
This Wikipedia article uses the term “syntactic expletive,” but it also uses the term “dummy subject” (the term used in this thread). I was taught that there wasn’t the subject in such sentences. In sentence diagrams, I forget where we put it (I’ve forgotten how to diagram sentences), but I’m pretty sure we didn’t put it in the subject’s place. ( But I (re)learned sentence diagramming (in college) from an old book.) On the other hand, we were taught that, when it was used that way, it was not an adverb. However, I think that there can sometimes be used adverbially to introduce a clause, as in examples I gave earlier in the thread (Coleridge: "And there were gardens . . . [a]nd here were forests . . . "; P.G.T. Beauregard: “There stands Jackson . . .”).
I think I’ve even seen there (the there that is sometimes called a dummy subject or a syntactic expletive) described in a respectable grammar book as an adverb (and I think they knew what they were doing by doing so; I think they made a conscious decision to “deem” or “dub” it an adverb).
I’m not quarreling, or even quibbling with anyone. Nomenclature and concepts differ from place to place, and they change over time. I think it’s a good thing to have some kind of nomenclature, though, but in grammar, differences in names or even concepts don’t matter too much to me, as long as I have the opportunity to get on the same page as the person using them.
[…] I don’t agree that “there” is a subject. Oak tree is the subject (imo) and there is part of an adverbial expression of place, which means there is inversion.[/quote]
Indeed: the adverbial expression of place in question is “out there” - the analysis goes astray if one separates “out” and “there” in this case.
There is NOT the subject of that sentence. A stubject takes action or being. There stood an Oak tree. What stood? The tree stood. Where did it stand? There.
I guess sometimes you can’t see the Oak trees for the “for theres.” (Sorry for my humor.)
If the sentence were “. . . , because an oak tree stood there . . .” it would seem clearer.
The dummy subject was taught ages ago, though. I remember that, because I remember thinking that if I made my brother the subject of all my sentences, I’d alway have a dummy subject. I got into trouble for my cheek.
Anyway, you’re both correct in one way or another.
Out of context of the story it perhaps was part of, it does sound funny. It’s well constructed though and a lot better than some of the other test “sentences” we’ve seen here recently.