UNIVERSITETET
I OSLO
Institutt f or litteratur, områdestudier og europeiske språk
WRITTEN EXAMINATION
SPRING 2015
3 pages
ENG1100 – English Grammar, an introduction
4 hours
No dictionaries or other aids are allowed.
All questions must be answered in English.
All answers must be written on copy-sheets.
Friday, 22 May 2015
Pass marks are required on both Part I and Part II.
Part I (40 %)
Explain the difference in form and meaning between the members of each of the following
sentence pairs.
1a He was jealous of her husband.
b He had been jealous of her husband.
2a You must meet my brother.
b You must have met my brother.
3a I fell out of my chair.
b I fell out with the chairman.
4a They were trying their best, to be honest.
b They were trying their best to be honest.
5a Alan knew that feeling very well.
b Alan knew that they were feeling very well.
Part II (60 %) See next page.
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Part II (60 %)
Read the following text and answer the questions below:
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Study reveals the trick to getting a song out of your head
Good news for anyone who spent the best part of 2014 involuntarily humming to Pharrell
Williams' Happy: a new study has uncovered a method for getting a catchy song out of your
head.
Researchers at the University of Reading have found that chewing gum can help the brain to
think less about music it has just heard. Their study involved 98 participants, each of whom was
given a series of pop music tracks to listen to.
While listening to the music, one third of the participants were given gum to chew, another
third were instructed to tap on a desk, while the remaining third did nothing. After each song,
the participants were then monitored for a three-minute period of silence, and told to press a
button if the song popped back into their head.
The study found people who chewed gum after hearing catchy songs thought less often
about the song than those in a control condition, reducing the amount they heard the song by one
third.
Snippets of audio which replay in one's head, also known as "earworms", are not
uncommon. Research by the university found they are experienced by up to 90 per cent of
people, with 15 per cent of those sufferers classifying the intrusion of unwanted audio into their
mind as "disturbing".
"The majority of us experience them for only short periods – perhaps just a few minutes –
but others can experience them for two or three days, which can be extremely frustrating and
debilitating," said Dr Phil Beaman, who works at the university's School of Psychology and
Clinical Language Sciences. "We wanted to explore whether a simple act like chewing gum
could help."
(From Sydney Morning Herald, April 2015, adapted)
Questions
a. Line 3: Could the infinitive form to get have been used instead of getting in this context
(without making any other changes to the sentence)? Why (not)?
b. Lines 7, 8 and 15: Identify each of the underlined verb forms (was, were, replay) as singular
or plural, and explain why this form was chosen.
c. Line 10: Describe the structure of the underlined noun phrase by identifying its head and any
other elements. (A full syntactic analysis is not required.)
d. Lines 2, 15, 20 and 21: The underlined words who and which are relative pronouns. In each
case, identify the antecedent of the relative pronoun and state whether the relative clause in
question is restrictive or non-restrictive. Give reasons for your classification.
e. Give one example from the text of each of the following types of nouns and comment on
your classification: (i) singular countable noun; (ii) plural countable noun; (iii) proper noun;
(iv) uncountable noun; (v) plural-only noun.
f. Identify one finite and one non-finite clause in the text that function as adverbials. Explain
how you classified them as finite and non-finite, respectively.
g. What is the information principle (for word order)? Give two examples from the text that
illustrate this principle, and explain how you identify the given information in your
examples.
h. Lines 22-23: Give a complete syntactic analysis of the underlined sentence.
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The grades will be published in Studentweb within 3 weeks. You will receive an e-mail when the results are
ready.
For an explanation of the mark obtained, please contact the exam coordinator, Kristin Berstad
(k.m.berstad@ilos.uio.no) within one week after the exam results have been published. Remember to include
your name and candidate number. The examiner will then decide whether to give a written or oral
explanation.
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