Chapter 9. Adverbial/Adjectival Clauses - English Grammar and Phonology

Questions
1.  Summarize what you believe are the important elements to this chapters.  THEN - Describe what was useful and what was confusing about Passive & Negative Sentences.

2.  What have you learned about the transformation of a sentence into an interrogative sentence?

Answers.

1. The elements I found important are outlined below:

The Transformation of indirect objects:

-“Maria gave a gift to George” transformed into “Maria gave George a gift” In this switch, George becomes the indirect object and “a gift” becomes the direct object.

The Passive transformation:
passive/passive voice- the subject of the sentence is undergoing the action of the verb passively

-“John hit Bill” transformed into “Bill was hit by John” The one doing the action is put after the verb. So the subject (noun phrase) is moved into an adverbial prepositional phrase “by John.”

Steps to transformation:

1.       The subject moves to a position at the end of the sentence, and the preposition is inserted preceding it.
2.       The original direct object moves from its slot following the verb to the beginning of the sentence, and becomes the new subject.

3.       The passive form of the verb is created by adding the passive marker BE + {-en} to the AUX, right before the main verb.

Negative Sentences:

Adding the word not and an auxiliary verb to a positive sentence to make it negative.

Example: “Peter will arrive early” --> “Peter will not (won’t) arrive early”

The word not occurs directly after the auxiliary verb. Therefore:

Jan should have been on time.-->Jan should not have been on time.

When the verb is BE: The bank remained open after dark.--> The bank did not remain open after dark. 

Nothing was confusing for me when it came to transforming these sentences. I just have to make sure I continue to study and commit to memory the diagraming of these sentences.
These are useful concepts to know in order to break down more complex sentences.

2) Interrogative Sentences: these ask questions, first kind is yes/no questions: transformation process: 1) in a declarative sentence, if there is no auxiliary verb or be, insert DO as an auxiliary verb. 2) Move the first auxiliary verb or be to the front of the sentence.
Second kind are WH- Questions: transformation process: 1) insert DO if required; move first auxiliary, or the main verb, to the front of the sentence. 2) Substitute the appropriate WH-word. 3) Move the WH-word to the front of the sentence.

Imperative Sentences: sentences that are commanding. Transformation process: 1) Delete the subject you from a declarative sentence that contains no auxiliary verbs. 2) Delete tense from the aux, leaving the base form of the verb
You are quietà Be quiet!

Everything in this chapter was very straight forward. I didn’t find anything confusing. I think I understood this chapter the best so far. Specifically, I found the steps that the author gave very useful when transforming the different types of sentences.