C O N TE M P OR A R Y E N GLI S H GR A M M A R
I. MORPHOLOGY
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Aspect in English (the two grammatical aspects: perfective & imperfective)
a. Draw a parallel between perfective and imperfective aspect in English
Tenses:
a. The simple present tense (form, definition, uses and examples)
b. The present continuous (form, definition, uses, verbs that combine with it, change of verb
meanings, examples)
c. Past simple and past continuous (forms, definition, uses, examples)
d. Present perfect (form, definition, theories, uses, examples)
e. Draw a parallel between the present perfect and past simple
f. Means of expressing future in English (present simple, present continuous, to be going to,
future simple, future continuous, future perfect: forms, uses and examples)
Mood and modality in English:
a. Mood and modality in English, a general presentation (grammatical moods in English, ways
of expressing modality, modal verbs, subjunctive mood)
b. Modal verbs, general presenation (types of modal verbs – central, peripheral, quasi-modals –
epistemic vs. root meaning, morphosyntactic properties of modal verbs)
c. Draw a parallel between the modal verbs CAN and MAY
d. The modal verb MUST
e. The modals SHALL/WILL
f. The subjunctive mood (indicative vs. Subjunctive, forms, distribution – fake independent
clauses, THAT clauses, Adverbial clauses)
Voice in English:
a. The passive voice in English (morphological properties of the verb, argument structure,
omission of by-phrase, uses, verbs of reporting, DOC, get-passive, causative)
The article in English (Definite, indefinite, zero articles, uses – specific, generic reference, other
uses – forms, examples)
II. SYNTAX OF SIMPLE SENTENCES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Briefly define and illustrate with an example the following term: simple (independent) sentence
The Principle of Endocentricity
Mention three properties of lexical categories
Mention three properties of functional categories
The classification of determiners according to their c-selectional properties
Explain the phenomenon of Subject Movement
Provide the definition of the term Small Clause, and illustrate it with an example
The classification of auxiliary verbs according to their initial position occupied in the structure
of the sentence
III. SYNTAX OF COMPLEX SENTENCES
1.
2.
3.
The complex sentence: definition, structure, types
Types of subordinate clauses (criteria of classification)
Types of complement clauses
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Extraposition and IT-insertion in THAT-clauses (definition, examples)
Topicalization in THAT-clauses (definition, examples)
Sequence of tenses (types, examples)
PRO-TO constructions (definition, logical subject, examples)
FOR-TO constructions (definition, logical subject, examples)
Accusative + Infinitive constructions (definition, logical subject, examples)
Nominative + Infinitive constructions (definition, logical subject, examples)
Differences between participles and gerunds
Causative verbs with infinitive and participial constructions
Verbs of physical perception with infinitive and participial constructions
Full gerunds and half gerunds (definition, examples)
IV. LEXICOLOGY
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Affixation – definition, examples
Composition – definition, examples
Conversion – definition, examples
Clipping – definition, examples
Blending – definition, examples
Abbreviation – definition, examples
Less productive WFRs (reduplication, deliberate coinages, etc.) – definition, examples
Lexeme, word-form, morphosyntactic word – definition, examples
Free morphemes (roots, stems, bases) – definition, examples
Bound morphemes (bound roots, blocked morphemes) – definition, examples
V. PRAGMATICS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Grice’s definition of Speaker’s Meaning
Difference between constative and performative utterances
Explicit and implicit performatives
Felicity conditions
Grammatical characteristics of performatives
Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (examples)
Representative Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
Directive Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
Commissive Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
Expressive Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
Declarative Speech Acts (points, direction of fit, psychological state, grammar, examples)
Inference and implicature
The cooperative principle
Conversational maxims (types, examples)
Indirect Speech Acts (definition, examples)
E N G LI S H A N D A M E R I C A N LI TE R A T UR E
I. EXPLANATION AND EXEMPLIFICATION OF LITERARY TERMS:
a.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Poetry
ballad
ode
sonnet
epic poem, lyrical
poem
5. pastoral
6. elegy
7. heroic epic
8. mock heroic epic
9. dramatic monologue
10. simile
11. metaphor
12. conceit
13. metonymy
14. personification
15. ekphrasis
16. terza rima
17. blank verse. heroic
couplet
18. haiku
19. free verse
b. Fiction
20. detective story
21. framed narrative
22. sentimental novel
23. Gothic novel
24. utopia, dystopia
25. round/dynamic and
flat/static characters
26. reliable and
unreliable narrator
27. telling and showing
in characterisation
28. omniscient narrator
29. open ominiscience
30. first person
narration
31. epistolary novel
32. multiple narrative
33. antinovel
34. cliffhanger
technique
35. serialised
publication
36. Bildungsroman
37. historical novel
38. epiphany
39. stream of
consciousness
40. flashback
41. chiaroscuro
c. Drama
42. comedy
43. tragedy
44. tragicomedy
45. comedy of manners
46. fourth wall illusion
47. tragic flaw
d. Ages and Literary
Trends/Movements
48. Renaissance
49. Metaphysical poetry
50. Mannerism
51. Baroque
52. Neo-Classicim
53. Romanticism
54. Transcendentalism
55. Realism
56. Victorianism
57. Pre-Raphaelitism
58. Aestheticism
59. Naturalism
60. Modernism
61. Imagism
62. Lost Generation
63. Postmodernism
e. Literary Theory
64. New Criticism
65. structuralism
66. reader-response
theory
67. hermeneutics
68. postcolonial theory
f. Other Literary Terms
69. irony
70. satire
71. absurd
72. off-Broadway
73. intertextuality
74. metatextuality
75. collage
76. literary canon
77. allegory
78. symbol
79. melodrama
80. Doppelgänger
II. TEXT FRAGMENT ANALYSIS IN ESSAY FORM FROM LITERARY
WORKS INCLUDED IN THE LIST BELOW:
ENGLISH LITERATURE:
1. William Shakespeare: Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The
Tempest
2. Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
3. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
4. Henry Fielding: Tom Jones
5. Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy
6. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
7. William Blake: The Lamb, The Tyger
8. P.B. Shelley: Ode to the West Wind
9. John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn
10. Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe
11. Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
12. W.M. Thackeray: Vanity Fair
13. Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
14. Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights
15. Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d’Urbervilles
16. Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
17. James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
18. Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
19. Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
20. E.M. Forster: A Passage to India
21. Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
22. William Golding: Lord of the Flies
AMERICAN LITERATURE:
1. Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
3. Herman Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener
4. Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
5. Henry James: Daisy Miller
6. Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea
7. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
8. William Faulkner: short stories (“A Rose for Emily”)
9. Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five
10. Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman
11. Edward Albee:Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
12. Sam Shepard: The God of Hell
13. Linda Hogan: Power
14. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Poems
15. Walt Whitman: Poems (“O Captain, My Captain”)
16. Emily Dickinson: Poems
17. Sylvia Plath: Poems
18. Ezra Pound: Poems
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1. Abrams, M.H., Greenblatt, Stephen (eds.). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. III. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.
2. Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
3. Bollobás Enikő. Az amerikai irodalom története. Budapest: Osiris, 2005.
4. Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin
Books, 1999.
5. Delaney, Denis et al. Fields of Vision. Literature in the English Language, London: Longman,
2003.
6. Pieldner Judit: Genres in Changing Contexts. An Introduction to the Study of English
Literature from the Beginnings to Romanticism. Miercurea Ciuc: Status, 2010.
7. Prohászka-Rád Boróka. Notes on Fiction. Miercurea Ciuc: Status, 2006.
8. Virágos Zsolt. Portraits and Landmarks. The American Literary Culture in the 19th Century.
Debrecen: U of Debrecen P, 2003.
9. Virágos Zsolt. The Modernists and Others. The American Literary Culture in the Age of the
Modernist Revolution. Debrecen: U of Debrecen P, 2008.